What is Twitter?
Twitter is a social media platform that allows users to post and interact with short messages called “tweets.” Launched in 2006, it quickly became a popular platform for sharing news, opinions, and real-time updates. With a character limit of 280, users can express themselves succinctly and engage with others through following, retweeting, liking, and replying to tweets. Twitter has become a valuable tool for individuals, companies, and organizations to connect with a global audience and stay informed on various subjects, including news, trends, and conversations.
How does Twitter work?
Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows users to send and read short messages called “tweets” of up to 280 characters. Here’s how Twitter works:
- Signup: To use Twitter, users need to create an account by providing a username, password, and email address.
- Following: Users can follow other Twitter accounts to see their tweets on their home feed. When you follow someone, their tweets will appear in your timeline.
- Tweeting: Users can compose and send tweets consisting of text, images, videos, or links. Tweets can be viewed by all of your followers.
- Hashtags: Twitter uses hashtags to categorize tweets and make them searchable. You can include relevant hashtags in your tweets, allowing others to find them easily.
- Retweeting: Users can retweet the tweets of others to share them with their followers. This helps to increase the reach of interesting or important content.
- Likes and Replies: You can react to tweets by liking them, similar to giving a “thumbs up.” Additionally, you can reply to tweets to engage in conversations with other users.
- Mentions: If you want to direct a tweet to a particular user, you can mention them by including their username preceded by the “@” symbol. This notifies the mentioned user and brings the tweet to their attention.
- Direct Messages: Twitter also enables users to send private messages to each other. Direct Messages (DMs) allow for more personal and confidential communication.
- Trends: Twitter displays trending topics and hashtags that are popular at a given time. This feature helps users discover and join in conversations on current events or popular discussions.
- Lists: Users can create lists to organize the accounts they follow. Lists allow you to group similar accounts, making it easier to view specific scopes.
- Notifications: Twitter sends notifications to users when someone interacts with their tweets, follows them, mentions them, or sends them direct messages. Users can customize their notification settings according to their preferences.
- Privacy Settings: Twitter provides different privacy settings, allowing users to regulate who can see their tweets, who can message them, and who can tag or mention them in tweets.
Overall, Twitter allows users to share thoughts and opinions, discover interesting content, engage with others, and stay updated with the latest trends and news.
What is Threads?
Alongside BlueSky Social, Threads is the latest Twitter opponent to throw its hat into the social media ring. Threads were expanded by Meta, the same company behind Facebook and Instagram, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg arguing that five million people have already enrolled in the four hours since its launch on Thursday, July 6th.
But what do Threads bring to the table? We’re going to be running through some of the critical discrepancies between Threads and Twitter to see if it’s worth the publicity.
Threads is a Meta app, with the company also reliable for a host of apps, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. To sign up for Threads, you will need to already have an Instagram account, with the option of importing important information like your verification, bio, and friends from Instagram over to Threads.Twitter only instructs an email address or phone number to sign up and is not intrinsically correlated to other social media platforms.
Threads doesn't have a desktop app
Threads is presently only available as an app on Android and iOS devices, which means you can only access it on smartphones and tablets. That means you can’t employ Threads on desktop PCs and laptops, which may be a big problem if that’s your main way of using social media.
Twitter doesn’t have this restriction, available as both an app (on Android and iOS) and through a web browser, so you can still log into the platform on Mac and PC.
Threads doesn't support GIFs or direct messages
Threads are missing numerous basic features at launch. This incorporates the lack of direct messaging, which means you’re unfit to speak to other users privately. We imagine Meta is working on this feature, as it is obtainable on Instagram.
Threads also don’t support GIFs when developing a new post. Right now, you can only use text, images, and videos in posts. Also, we predict that it’s only a matter of time until Meta adds this feature to the new forum, but it does highlight that the service lacks a lot of functionality on offer from Twitter. while verified accounts can include up to 25,000 characters per post.
Twitter has a Trending feature
Threads is a pretty barebones app at the moment, with no way to see any trending topics or users. When you sign up, you are greeted with the standard scrolling experience on most social media apps and a search bar.
Twitter is well known for its Trending feature, which displays popular topics in your area and across the world. Finding new users is made pretty easy thanks to this feature, but it’s expected that Threads will refine its app over its lifetime to make searching for new topics and users easier.
Does Threads kill Twitter?
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF Threads, Meta’s Instagram-Twitter hybrid, had been met with confusion and scepticism. Then, when it launched yesterday, 30 million people signed up within hours.
Threads, the latest of Meta’s copycat innovations, faces a long slog in its bid to topple Twitter as the microblogging platform of choice. It has jumped into a feeding frenzy for users that have risen increasingly heated since Elon Musk bought the platform last year. But Threads comes with big potential, thanks to its polished tech, built-in user base, and a reputation for reasonable temperance that’s possible to please big-money advertisers.
The platform also reaches a particularly vulnerable moment for Twitter. Musk’s contemporary announcement that free Twitter accounts would, temporarily, only be able to view 600 tweets per day was met with derision. Such moves will likely further hurt advertising on the platform, exacerbating a problem that’s been ongoing throughout Musk’s tenure.
Review of Threads globally
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/06/threads-review-twitter-without-rough-edges-or-news
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/06/threads-review-twitter-without-rough-edges-or-news
https://www.arabianbusiness.com/opinion/threads-vs-twitter-and-the-social-smackdown
