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Thread carefully.
looking at Meta's attempt to weave a new social space. I know I don't normally talk about current
events, but I was on Just a Phase this weekend. If you haven't checked out his show, check it out
on YouTube. It's Just a Phase. It's a live show. It's a little bit of a different format. So we
just kind of went off the top and chatted for a good hour. It was nice after not dropping an
episode last week, which was the holiday week. I just needed to recharge, you know, so I hit the
beach for a little bit, got my toes in the sand and got to hit reset on everything. So we're back
and a whole lot's happened. But one of the topics we talked about on It's Just a Phase was threads,
and it got me thinking about how imitation is the highest form of flattery. You know,
you can't always lose if you're being imitated. So we're going to get into that. We're going to
get into the theme of imitation, especially in the world of tech and social media. And I mean,
it seems to be like in tech or in social media, why create when you can steal? You know,
we haven't really seen any new social media come out in 2016 or 15 when with Snapchat,
you could kind of call that the beginning of the video, the beginning of the TikTok generation,
you know. But if you think about it, Reels and all that stuff that's on Facebook and Instagram,
that was stolen right from Snapchat as soon as that started to get popular. So is this going to
be another Twitter-like platform? Does this have any wings? Is it going to stick around for a
little bit? You know, FaZe thinks the name is stupid, doesn't think it's going to stick around
simply because of that, as well as some other reasons. But so what is it? Threads is Facebook's
new Twitter-like platform. It launched on the 5th of July. We're currently recording this on the
9th. And so far, there is 80 million users on it. So people are adopting this fast. What is it?
I mean, it's literally Twitter. So it's a text-based social platform. You link your Instagram
and follow everybody that you would follow on Instagram, and then they show up in this text
base, and then you can kind of just start a chain of threads or tweets, whatever you want to call it,
underneath that person's thread. So it's kind of like a mixture between a forum. It's literally
Twitter. If you're familiar with Twitter, it's just like that. It's like an absolute clone.
so they claim they being meta and facebook claim that they want to get away from internet fighting
and have this as kind of a safe place that you can just be yourself so there's their expectation
of what they think it's going to be and then there's when it hits the internet we'll see if
that tranquility lasts and if people aren't savage uh my experience with it so far there's
definitely been people posting some dumb stuff and then people really flaming them in the comments so
i don't know if they're just going to promote like uh positive content that might be a smart
marketing move to promote positive content um right now it's ad free so who knows if it's going
to stay like that but this is not the first time something's attempted to come along and be the
the new Twitter. There's been instances like Mastodon or Blue Sky. Mastodon in the March of
2016 had maybe 2.5 million users. It's down to maybe 1.8 million now. So did it become the new
Twitter? Statistics would say no, but I believe it's still a thing. You know, the marketing seems
like it's become we're the new twitter alternative this is a new decentralized platform and the thing
about it is is so many of them came out so many twitter alternatives and they're still being
marketed they don't kind of stand on their own but people spread their attention they don't know if
they're following so influencers aren't sure if they're going to post a mastodon or blue sky or
both and people spread their attention between the two of them so it's kind of splitting their
attention they don't really get that full deep enthrallment that every social media is looking
for you know they want it to be like crack they want you to be going back and checking your phone
and refreshing all the time so uh they're looking to do that we'll see whether it happens so the
idea of imitation versus innovation everything is derivative you know there's always some
preceding even with notes and chords we were talking about that on the uh on the podcast
there's so many there's only so many chords so you know ed sheeran recently won that uh lawsuit
where they're trying to say you know we own these chords you can't play these and they went back to
you know the 1600s to gregorian chants that use similar chords to pop music so you could argue
everything is derivative but as it stands right now as of the 9th there's a cease and desist
flying from twitter to threads to meta saying hey you know you guys essentially stole our platform
and they're they're worried so the fact that i mean 80 million users that is no joke that means
this is essentially a two-player game. It's really Twitter versus threads. And if you looked
on Twitter, Twitter versus threads is trending. So you can't get away from the conversation.
So the idea of not always losing when you're being imitated. Snapchat didn't necessarily
lose out when reels and stories came out, which were essentially snaps. It got more popular.
you know it was marketing for snapchat because whenever you're called an alternative you get
free marketing and people get to check out both they get to see okay what makes this unique
uh the idea the hashtag or trending topics you know twitter has trending topics reddit eventually
uh evolve those i don't know if if reddit had trending first or what i think i got my timeline
right that it was kind of a twitter thing and reddit which was the older social platform
really changed a lot of its stuff based on the new social media it hasn't adopted completely
to mobile just yet but it's still a huge player in terms of where people spend their attention on
online so that's what the competition is that's the role of competition and imitation people
if you make something easier to use and you get them engagement, people are going to use their
platform. So part of what I'm seeing is influencers are saying that when they post on threads,
they're getting more engagement than they got on Instagram. So they're looking to move their
content over there. Nobody knows what this is going to be when it grows up. Nobody knows if
it's going to be memes, if it's going to be recipes, food pictures. We're going to see what
the algorithm pushes and we're going to see people are going to change what they post based on what
people interact with so not sure it's kind of the wild wild west right now uh is it going to last
this is the question that everybody's asking and probably why you tuned into this nobody knows
obviously 80 million people can lose interest in a month or so um and just not be posting or using
the platform ads haven't been added yet so that's going to change the experience if people feel that
this just becomes another playing ground for people to promote their stuff and just get pounded
with sponsored ads it's probably doesn't have a chance of lasting like it would uh like phase said
does the name it's the fact that it doesn't have the greatest name mean anything for whether or
not it's going to last was this really thought out and do they have a runway and a game plan
and a tech launch rollout? Or did they just say, hey, we can copy this while Twitter's in the news?
People don't like it. Now might be the perfect time in the marketplace to drop something new.
You know, this isn't necessarily bad for Twitter. I mean, sure it is if users are going to spend
their attention on threads and say it's one or the other. I wasn't a huge Twitter user. I'm down
to check threads out. There's probably a lot of people like me. Everybody who uses it isn't
necessarily giving up their Twitter to use it. And we're talking about Twitter now. I haven't
talked about Twitter in years. So the fact that it's part of the conversation, it's not really
losing. This is something that they can spin out to say, hey, we've reformed this. We've done this.
Maybe they go back to bare bones. Maybe they go back to bare bones Twitter. Maybe they shift their
algorithm towards what people like to see on threads. And now you're just getting the same
thing. It almost feels like a third party reader app. It's so much like Twitter. I mean, it feels
like you're just reading Twitter and people are posting the same content that they're posting to
other forums because they're not sure what their personality should be on this threads yet.
So I don't know. Tech critics like it. People are loving the app so far. Try it out yourself.
get your own experience drop something in the comments let me know what you think you could
drop your threads username i will follow you if you drop it in the comments on youtube
um or in any of the reels that that go out for this episode so my prediction on the future um
i think it has a runway i think it like anything i don't know in today's day and age if it can last
as long but hey if tiktok is caught on and doesn't look like it's going anywhere i guess people have
room in their attention span for another social platform so hey the fact that the market is
saturated with different social media and different ways to connect with people that might pull
people's attention in a different they might not even try threads but who knows let's see what we
got uh in conclusion announcements uh conscious beautiful grand reopening is july 28th that's on
1101 Hamilton street and that, uh, Hamilton business center with the colored flags on the
outside. It's, um, I don't remember the suite number. I'll get that and update you guys in
future. I'll be pronouncing that. Um, same day, July 28th, Andrew Schultz has come into wind
Creek. So that's going to be a pretty crazy day for me. Uh, just saw Bill Burr last week. That
was a great show so if you get a chance he's on tour if you get a chance go uh see him that was
well worth it so i would encourage you to explore threads form your own opinion about it and let's
start the conversation if you want to follow me i'm at teo the designer like i am on every other
platform but this has been i will not lose podcast where we set out to prove everything is learned
from failure we must persevere recognize it as one step closer to success to support the show
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thank you for listening peace