The launch of Threads in Spain last Saturday, although it was planned, has brought more surprises than expected. Especially on X, the social network owned by Elon Musk. Some tweeters watched with astonishment how Mark Zuckerberg’s new social network, launched in July in the United States, seemed to attract many users of what until a few months ago was called Twitter. For those who have managed to build a community on X with great effort, it is a setback, since since last summer they have been trying to monetize their presence on the social network. And if his followers leave, his meager income will disappear.
In just a few days, many users with a presence on X have opened their own account on Threads, like Pedro Sánchez. Some even posted messages as if they had always been there. Something that had not happened in the cases of Mastodon or Bluesky, social networks similar to X that to date had garnered more users.
Threads’ competition in Europe comes in turbulent times for X. Although in reality the storm has not stopped since Elon Musk is in charge. Determined to play his role as Messiah, the tycoon’s problems with the microblogging platform are mounting: the threat of bankruptcy is increasingly palpable after his continuous contempt for advertisers, and he also remains in the sights of the authorities. This same week, the EU has filed charges against the company for possible negligence in content moderation.
The growth of Threads has a simple explanation: it is supported by Meta. And more specifically through Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg’s most thriving social network today. In fact, you have to have an Instagram account to access Threads.
This has caused a strange phenomenon. By opening the Threads account we are invited to follow all our followers on Instagram. Even if they don’t have an account. In this way, when registering on Threads, some users find that they already have followers, something that has a positive impact.
These first days we are witnessing the spectacle of seeing how social networks with a very different identity, X and Instagram, touch and even collide. Let us keep in mind that the network acquired by Elon Musk is a territory where politics and journalistic information largely reign. On Instagram these types of messages are much less frequent.
Furthermore, the nature of X and Instagram are very different. On X, text continues to predominate, while on Instagram visual messages clearly predominate. All this has generated great confusion among X users who have just made the leap to Threads. And some even go to Instagram, where it is essential to register to use Threads.
In any case, it can be inferred that anyone who is not interested in having an Instagram account will have difficulty accessing Threads, unless
Those who see the bottle half full highlight something that seems undeniable: there is more peace and fewer trolls on Threads. Campaigns have even been launched to stop them using a tool that has no parallel in X.
We can mute anyone who replies to one of our messages in Threads. Neither we nor other people will see the silenced message, which greatly eliminates the possibilities of poisoning. And it even makes the armies of bots dedicated to launching hate campaigns lose meaning.
But a certain humiliation effect is also occurring among some users with thousands or millions of followers on X: the new social network leads them to suddenly have only a few hundred or a few thousand followers.
This not only collapses the ego. It also raises the fear that if Threads grows and displaces X, the most influential users will lose weight if they are not able to maintain their followers on the new social network.
Let’s think, for example, about the politicians who had their moment of glory, in which they gained many followers in X, and who are now in the second line. Your messages on Threads may seem insignificant today. Even Pedro Sánchez only has a little over 26,000 followers on Threads right now. On Twitter he has more than 1,800,000.
Threads worries the most popular users on X. It imposes a clean slate. Especially if it is the case that a user of X does not have a presence on Instagram or his presence is testimonial. Despite widespread criticism of Elon Musk’s management of
Threads, on the other hand, has interesting advantages without paying anything: it allows you to edit messages (for five minutes) and they can have 500 characters. It also supports threads like X.
Meta committed to something important that is already a reality: integrating the new social network into ActivityPub, the open social networking protocol established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body responsible for the open standards that drive the web. This protocol is the one used by Mastodon or Blusky.
But the most important thing to understand Threads is that it is still an appendix to Instagram. Threads posts can be shared via Instagram as posts or stories. You can also send them to Facebook or, attention this is important, directly to WhatsApp.
We still have a long way to go to see how Threads evolves. But the arrival of users has been a constant trickle for days and does not seem to be stopping. To this we must add that the situation of .
