What’s next for Threads

No one, including the top leadership at Meta, expected Threads to be such a runaway, early success, having now amassed more than 110 million sign-ups in just over a week.

At the opening of Meta’s internal Q&A for employees yesterday (which a source let me tune into), a sizzle reel showed some of the early Threads posts from celebrities and brands, along with a graphic depicting how sign-ups soared to over 70 million in just two days. It was a deserved victory lap for a company that hasn’t launched a successful standalone app from scratch since… forever.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Threads launch, as Instagram chief Adam Mosseri later explained in the meeting, was how it was built. A team of just three product managers, three designers, and “50ish” engineers created and launched it within five months. For Meta and its Big Tech peers, such constraints for a big, splashy bet are unheard of.

Many commentators have been quick to point out that sign-ups alone aren’t a signal of success, and Meta knows this. “We are very excited and thrilled at how many people have signed up,” Mosseri told employees yesterday. “We’re also trying to keep perspective and remember that it’s easier to get people to sign up than it is to build something that people want to use in a month or a year from now. So we’re very, very focused on retention.”

Facebook defined the gold standard for social media retention many years ago, and it remains an incredibly sticky product to this day (more on that later). It’s obviously too early to know if Threads will be as sticky, though there are signs it could be.

I’ve obtained some eye-popping, early usage stats: There have been over 70 billion impressions, 450 million posts (excluding reposts), and over 4.5 billion likes on Threads to date. That’s real engagement. Mosseri said in yesterday’s meeting that the company is working to thwart fake activity and that, at least for now, bot prevalence is “roughly the same level as Instagram.”

There are already some key usage differences between Threads and Twitter. The goal is to be a place that is “less angry or more friendly, depending on how you want to frame it,” according to Mosseri. He has already drawn headlines for telling me that Threads won’t prioritize news, which is to be expected given Meta’s many bruises from trying that in the past.

Company leadership is fully aware that publishers and journalists like myself are already embracing the platform, however. I haven’t heard anything about news being intentionally suppressed in Threads, though Mosseri did hint on yesterday’s call that the company is “ranking things a little bit more thoughtfully.”

Based on internal Meta data I’ve seen, the biggest region for Threads usage (by a wide margin) is the US, followed by Brazil, while Twitter’s biggest market after the US has historically been Japan. And while Twitter has leaned heavily into video under Musk, Mosseri was clear during yesterday’s meeting that text will remain the primary media type on Threads.

Ads will come to Threads “over the long run,” but he reiterated that monetization isn’t a priority right now. I have a feeling that Twitter’s introduction of creator payouts this week could speed up Meta’s work to give creators ways to make money on Threads, though I’m not sure Mosseri’s team feels the heat to do so quite yet.

A question that likely wasn’t contemplated inside Meta before the launch of Threads was raised during yesterday’s Q&A: Do we see Instagram traffic declining due to the introduction of Threads? (Translation: Could this thing be so successful that it actually makes us lose money in the short term?)

Mosseri said Instagram’s usage wasn’t hurting so far but that it was “something that we’re going to keep a close eye on… If the pie grows [overall], I think that’s a good thing. But we definitely want to understand if we’re mix-shifting attention between the apps in the family.”

He was quick to acknowledge “tons of things that are missing” in the app, including better accessibility support, the ability to search for posts, an edit button, and a following feed. Meta wants Threads to be officially available in the European Union, though the looming Digital Markets Act regulation makes that timing uncertain. And the promised integration with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol that also powers Mastodon, is a “long while” out but still a priority, too, per Mosseri. “We’re just working through the list and burning it down.”

It wasn’t just Threads hitting big milestones for Meta this week. Facebook reached 3 billion monthly active users. The head of the app, Tom Alison, announced the stat in an internal post earlier this week and joined Mosseri on Thursday’s Q&A call to talk about the high-level strategy for the blue app.

The overall sentiment of Alison’s remarks, if I could sum them up, was we’re still here. Facebook still makes Meta a ton of money and, despite what headlines would suggest, has picked up its pace of growth recently. Alison said that the company had also reversed the worrisome trend of declining usage from people aged 18-29. “Facebook’s in it for years to come, and we’re going to be alive and well,” he said during yesterday’s meeting.

Given how Facebook is now a hodgepodge of different experiences, from the main feed to Groups to its Craigslist competitor, Marketplace, it’s fair to wonder what the app’s main purpose is anymore. “We’re really all about people who are curious,” according to Alison, “who want to explore the world through others, through real people, real connection, through community, through creators, [and] through their friends.” It’s interesting that friends, the original core value proposition of Facebook, now comes last in that sentence.

A big push now is making Facebook more of a place for creators to build followings, said Alison. There are now 60 million “pro” accounts on Facebook, which give people extra features and the ability to earn engagement-based payouts for their content. That’s up from 30 million at the beginning of this year. “We’re making a lot of progress with creators and public figures now,” he said. “I think we were a little bit late to figure this out, but I feel like we’re on a good track right now. And, I think, over time, you’re going to hear Facebook more in the public conversation.”

If you want a sign that ByteDance isn’t going to spin off TikTok, look no further than this week’s news that US-based employees will be able to, for the first time, participate in the company’s share buyback program.

As first reported by Reuters, ByteDance has changed the vesting requirements for the stock it issues US employees so that they can sell their shares without the company going public or having another liquidity event (like a spinoff), giving them the ability to participate in the next buyback later this year. It wouldn’t make sense to go through the trouble of changing this policy if a spinoff was on the near horizon.

After talking to current and former employees, the reaction to the news seems to be mostly excitement. Many are also wondering why this didn’t happen sooner, given that ByteDance has already done several rounds of buybacks with employees outside of the US. There also seems to be some confusion about the tax burden facing employees who are vested or vesting soon and what price the shares will be sold at later this year. Documents shared with employees that I’ve seen say the company will share more on all that soon.

There’s something else that TikTok employees would like to hear more about: the fate of the app in the US since the threat of a ban still looms. Nothing has been shared internally on that front recently, I’m told.

Thanks to all of the former IRL employees who have responded since I wrote about the social media startup, which raised $200 million, dissolving due to alleged fraud.

It’s clear that a contingent is still in disbelief about the board’s claim that 95 percent of the users were bots, though I found ousted CEO Abraham Shafi’s rebuttal to be lacking in substance. There’s something fishy going on here for sure.

I don’t want to overplay my hand too early, so for now, all I’ll say is that I’d love to keep chatting with former employees and investors. I’m happy to keep you anonymous. You can contact me on my website or respond to this email.

“You’re a bully.” - California Congressman Darrell Issa to FTC Chair Lina Khan.

Based on yesterday’s House hearing, it’s clear that Republican members of Congress share the tech world’s disdain for Khan’s approach to challenging mergers. One senior executive at a Big Tech company jokingly mused to me recently that to be sued by Khan these days must be an indication that you’re doing something right. Her agency’s ire has become a weird, cynical badge of honor, creating an “enemy of my enemy” kinsmanship among leaders at tech firms that normally wouldn’t be friendly with each other.

After losing her case to block Microsoft from buying Activision, it’s clear that Khan’s playbook for fighting tech M&A isn’t working. (I do, however, love to see my taxes go to such a deep analysis of Call of Duty.) Khan has been clear that her goal is to set in motion more sweeping changes to how antitrust law works in the US and not necessarily win the cases she brings. For now, she’s mostly pissing people off.

That’s it for this issue. I’ll be back next week. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your feedback.

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