Twitter (X) vs Threads and how it relates to your business

At the start of July, Meta announced to the world their competitor to Twitter (now called ‘X’), Threads. Less than a week later they stated they had 100 million users. Meanwhile Twitter can’t stay out of the news for all the wrong reasons, the rebrand being the most recent example,  and is losing users every day. The question is for small to medium sized businesses. If you are on Twitter (X) should you move over to Threads? If you aren’t on either, should you join up with one of both of them?  In this short article we will look at the current state of play just a week after the arrival of the new player on the social media market space.

(For the rest of this article I will be referring to the renamed ‘X’ platform as Twitter as that is the name that people know the service is and will keep calling that for the foreseeable future. Especially Meta, Facebook / Threads owners, currently own the copyright to ‘X’ for social media services, meaning that the current ‘X’ brand for Twitter might not be retained for very long.)

What are Twitter and Threads?

Both social media applications are a form of microblogging sites. Microblogging is where people post short text messages, images, or short videos, which in reality isn’t really that much different to any other social media site. Their ‘point of difference’ is that people can reply to those posts with posts of their own, and new people can reply to those other posts, and so on, forming a chain, or a conversation, of posts. These conversations are what drive engagement, the amount of time being spent on the site, allowing the social media companies to insert ads in the conversation to earn income. Users can follow other users so they automatically get that users posts automatically displayed in their feed. If a user is famous, or becomes famous on the site, the social media company will post those posts in front of other users in the hopes they will follow and also build up more engagement. If a person gets enough followers, then advertisers will directly hire those people to promote products. (This practice has had quite a few controversies as people often make advertorial posts without declaring that they are adverts, which breaks most countries’ advertising laws).

These companies built their systems from the ground up to work on smartphones. People have their phones on them pretty much 24/7 and will pull them out constantly to fill in a spare moment. By always having new posts for people to follow, maintaining that engagement and allowing them to advertise more to them. (There’s also a powerful fear of missing out on some new item and you want to see what your friends think.)  These systems became powerful tools for not just individuals and businesses but governmental agencies and other organisations to quickly get messages out to people.

Twitter vs Threads – what’s the difference

Largely not a lot as they both have similar functions to be usable: short posts, easy to read format, some form of timeline so you can keep track of how new/old a post is and how popular it is, being able to follow the conversation chain, and easy to use on a smartphone. The underlying technology simply requires enough server computer power to share the posts across the various users. Also there are many other alternatives to the big two, such as Bluesky (owned by the original creator of Twitter), Mastodon which is a decentralised alternative, and too many more to list. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages but I’ll just focus on Twitter and Threads

• Twitter is the incumbent, having popularised the concept, and at 2021 had almost 400 million active users (out of over 1 billion accounts). While there has been a large number of people leaving the platform since the Elon Musk take over of the company, there’s still 353.9 Million registered users, with 237.8 million using it on a daily basis. Threads may have gained over 100 million users, but most of that was from making it easy for users to copy their followers lists from Instagram to Threads. Instagram has over 1 billion users registered and over 500 million daily users.
• Threads at the time of writing still in its first generation state. Many of the functions found in Twitter, such as direct messaging to a follower, must be done through the user’s Instagram account. Twitter is largely matured, though recent changes in system post Musk takeover has resulted in some well publicised problems. 
• Twitter has only recently added features that have been part of Instagram for some time, such as online shopping. Both have live video and audio conferencing, along with collaboration systems.
• Both are free, but have paid options that give you access to additional features that mostly tie in to marketing and metrics.
• They are both considered more acceptable to younger users as places like Facebook are largely considered to belong to ‘old people’ and businesses now.
• As the majority of people who will receive a post on their account are followers, you don’t have to spend effort ‘converting’ them to being consumers. You’re spending your effort in keeping them thinking about you which will generate more income in the long term. This applies to both Twitter and Threads
• Can be very hard to get new people to follow you. Unless you have a post that goes vial and appears on people’s feeds, you’re not going to any new customers in this format. But that doesn’t mean that some effort isn’t worth it. Millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha, will use the posts on a businesses micro blogging account to judge how the company acts with customers.

On the negative side both services have very large issues you have to be aware of.

• There is no form of automated content moderation (despite what has been implied by both companies.) Any post is liable to have additional posts that are negative in some way (if not offensive) and you will have to spend time moderating them. Both systems have only limited moderating tools so it might result in you hiding or removing the original post to remove the negative ones.
• Accounts have no control over who follows them. Others choose to follow an account so that account becomes associated with the follower whether they want to be or not. I myself have run into several cases of Twitter users being followed and reposted in accounts that represent the opposite of what they stand for. (I won’t cite examples for obvious reasons.) While a business can remove or block followers they find, it’s a cat and mouse game as those removed just create new accounts to start the process again.
• In recent months the rules put into place by the new owner of Twitter has allowed a lot of extremist behaviour to be allowed to remain on the system, and even gets promoted by the algorithms that drive the system. This has also been a long standing issue with Meta’s products (Facebook, Instagram, etc) and it is likely that will be the same for Threads.
• Other issues that Twitter has are ‘bots’ spouting disinformation, fake accounts that exist only to generate followers to boost someone’s profile, and the distribution of illegal or highly objectionable material.  While this is only a fraction of the total user base, depending which figure you look at ranges from 5 to 20%, but this is likely not going to be an issue for a small business based in New Zealand. According to some reports, for the most popular Instagram accounts,  the percentage of fake accounts following them could account for 50% of the total number, but for a NZ SME again this is very unlikely to be an issue. 
• Threads owner Meta, also has a long history of mismanagement of people’s personal data and abuse of the inside information. While Twitter hasn’t had the same level of issues in this respect, with the drive to make the company profitable there is the increased possibility of such occurring in my opinion.
• Currently all Twitter posts are no longer searchable through Google. This is Twitter acting to prevent others ‘scraping their data’ without paying for it. How much this will effect your business appearing in search results is yet to be seen. In my opinion it could have a detrimental effect if you rely on Twitter as your primary method of promotion for your business.
• While Threads had a very high surge of account signups, over 100 million over the two weeks, currently the active daily user count is in freefall at the time of writing. This points to most of the activity being related to people just ‘staking their claim’ to account names that match their other existing social media accounts, to keep it out of others hands. There is no guarantee that these signups have any plans to be active users in the near to mid future, or until Threads can offer a compelling reason why to use the service.

What does this mean for me as a small business owner?

Considering all the matters, there are many reasons why having either Twitter and/or Threads as part of your marketing strategy is a sensible idea. In my opinion I think that for most businesses, micro blogging apps such as Twitter, Threads, etc, have the potential to be used as both a micro newsletter system and as a customer service portal. 

Using them as a more informal instant newsletter system can be of use for many businesses. While sites like Facebook or a WordPress blog require you to visit the site and navigate it to find new information, an update delivered directly to your phone in a live or near live format can be very powerful. This is even more relevant as email based marketing is mostly ignored these days and treated as junk mail, like the paper version pre-2000s. With the conversational nature of Twitter and Threads, a post carries more weight as you will see peoples reactions to. I consider it to be the digital equivalent of the old advertising rule ‘nothing is more effective than word of mouth’. It also lets you highlight promotions that have a few hours or days to make its impacts then can be forgotten. Here are some examples to consider

• A bakery introducing a new pie filling or a biscuit. Step one gets the information out there to the ‘fans’ who would be more likely to the new food item. As they are sold the owner encourages the fans to post their feedback on the new item. Which if good garners more attention, and if bad lets them quickly adjust the product to be to the customers tastes, and win them over on repeat tries.
• A roofer can send out reminders for people to get their gutters cleaned and have the roofs inspected before winter hits. This can generate a lot of low cost quick turn around work, with the potential of bigger jobs when problems are found.
• For fast turn around promotions, like clearing a soon to expire stock item. While it might take no more effort to generate an email message to do the role. Most people will only check their email infrequently these days, and many email systems will automatically treat the message as spam. As a post in their feeds, it’s at or near the top of their timeline, and they generally are less likely to have a negative response as the message is only a few seconds of their time. (Moderation is the key as posting too frequently will result in them unfollowing the business,)

These micro blogging systems also allow for a form of customer service at several levels. The simplest is responding to comments or issues offering solutions that any one looking at the account can see. (Which always looks good for those wanting a feel of the business they want to give custom too.) While it’s a form of near instant communication, it allows the business to manage their response to ensure that the best solution is offered quickly. Next level is direct messaging so that it’s one on one allowing for greater detail. It is real time people expect there to be small delays between messages as people check things and enter a response. By removing it from the public eye it also lets the business deal with matters that shouldn’t be known by the general public. Lastly both Twitter and Threads will offer forms of conference style and direct audio/video communication. When things get elevated to that level, being able to manage it from anywhere is useful. (Being able to record these calls can be useful too should things reach the stage of lawyers being involved.)

Additional tools both systems offer or will offer additional features that will help a wide range of businesses. What these will be is a bit hard to talk about, both businesses have have a history of over promising and under delivering. These features tend to roll in and out of availability over time as the feature war between competing applications will lead to new (sometimes half baked) ideas to be promoted, then quietly removed when they fail to generate revenue for the company. For now it’s better to just use the ones that they both reliably have, micro blog posting with the ability to add audio or full short form video. 

So should you set up a Twitter or Threads account?

One of the big rules I’ve always said around social media is that you use it for what it is good for and spend only the time on it that doesn’t cut into your revenue generation time. Both products are great for under a minute content creation for quick promotion and customer information. They also work well for customer service giving you a method to manage the situation that will work for both sides. The other features both services offer largely depends on the type of business you operate. Which should you as a small business owner choose?

• Already have an Instagram account – then adding Threads to your marketing process is quick and will allow you to transfer your existing followers to the new system.
• Already have a Twitter account – for now maintain that as your existing followers won’t necessarily follow you if you exit Twitter for Threads.
• Have a Twitter account but no longer want to be on the platform – moving over to Threads will require you to also set up an Instagram account. You will also have to transition your existing followers to the new platform and accept a percentage of them that won’t follow you over.
• Don’t have either Twitter or Threads – In my own opinion here, I wouldn’t recommend jumping on to either platform just yet because they both have problems. While Twitter is the mature platform, its current owner is constantly trying many (seemingly random) ideas to make the company profitable and in the process causing no end of problems. Threads, no matter what Meta might say, is still very much in an early access state, where many many ideas are not completely implemented or liable to be overhauled now that the system is in the hands of actual users.
• Don’t have either Twitter or Threads but you want to start using one of them – as I have noted in this article both platforms have the same general range of features, userbase, and issues. If pressed, in my opinion, Threads has the longer term potential. Unless Musk can push Twitter into a stable and more importantly profitable state, there is no guarrent the site won’t keep haemorrhaging users from the worsening user experience. Threads is the better option simply because it’s built up from a larger ecosystem of applications (Facebook, Messenger, etc). However this product is not even month old at the time of writing, so I would recommend waiting until the hype dies off (and they fix / implement various features) so you can look to other users feedback on what the experience is like. 
• Don’t want to use either alternative – this will limit you to the runners up like Bluesky and Mastodon who have nowhere the market reach, so in practical terms it will be a waste of effort. Maybe this will change in the future but for now if you’re not ready to use either then wait. Let the hype around Threads die down and come back to look at both Twitter and Threads again. This will give Meta time to fix their bugs and implement all the features they planned. This will also give Twitter time to work on improving their platform, now that they face real competition, and make what they offer worth the investment of time.

And that’s my examination of the arrival of Threads and its potential competition to Twitter. How useful either will be largely depends on the nature of your business, but they can both provide another marketing tool that’s simple and has little cost to a small business. While both have benefits and risks when used correctly and time is taken to manage them, you can help keep your business name out there in the great fight to appear at the top of the search results.

Sources:

• https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-users-does-twitter-have
• https://backlinko.com/instagram-users
• https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/19-42-of-active-twitter-accounts-are-fake-or-spam-analysis/
• https://fstoppers.com/originals/instagrams-problem-fake-users-might-be-much-bigger-and-far-darker-you-think-485579