
Meta's new app Threads passed more than 70 million
Threads users link their account to Instagram
According to Statista
Meta
BYU professor Scott Church, associate professor in the School of Communications, specializes in studying popular and online culture. Church published an article
'From Meta's release, it looks like Threads is a place intended to create a more positive online space,' Church said. 'Whether or not they'll succeed, who knows.'
Church said new social media platforms need friends for users to interact with and need to appear cool to prospective users. Younger generation users will congregate on a new social media platform, but as the platform becomes commercialized and older generation users start to gather, the younger generation users will abandon the platform to go somewhere else. Church said that this cycle appears to happen often with social media platforms.
'The best I can do is give a wait and see approach,' he said.
BYU senior Evan Jack first heard about Threads on Twitter a week before Threads was set to launch. He mainly heard about it through users online as they 'talked about Twitter dying.' Jack said that he might as well join Threads. According to data from Statista
Jack said that the number of users did not impress him. He thinks that many people signed up without actually posting anything to their Threads account. Out of the many people that he does follow on Threads, Jack said 'almost no one' has posted content.
'I feel like Twitter is dying, and will eventually be replaced, but there are a lot of other social media sites out there, so that doesn't necessarily mean that Threads is the one to replace it,' he said.
Threads is available on the App Store and Google Play for free download. As additional users sign up for the app, time will tell whether or not it will be successful.