Social Media Apps – Twitter and Threads
There is a fierce competition between the two social media giants (Meta) and (Twitter) with broad advantages and huge user bases.
“Twitter” is facing escalating challenges and a vague vision for the future given the internal turmoil and confusion caused by a series of decisions made by its new owner “Elon Musk” in recent months, and the widespread confusion. These decisions affect users’ attitudes towards the Twitter platform.
Meta, on the other hand, seized the opportunity to solidify its position in the traditional competition and launched a new app to compete with Twitter, which tweets in threads on a single topic.
And between “Meta” and “Twitter”, users may be the biggest winners in this competition. Considering that this contest will stimulate innovation and enhance the social media experience, providing platforms with various advantages that every company hopes to use to win users, because they are the basis of the real value of these platforms.
Elon Musk’s policies
Dr. Ahmed Banafa, an American information technology expert and academic advisor to San Jose State University in California, briefly interpreted the future of “Twitter” from the following perspectives in an exclusive speech on “Sky News Arab Economy”: These challenges, first from Elon ·Musk’s policy and its influence in the recent period since the acquisition of the company began to be mentioned as follows:
- The Twitter story is a stark tale of mismanagement led by one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs of our time, Elon Musk.
- While his true motivations for acquiring Twitter are unclear, his tenure at the platform has undoubtedly led to unprecedented chaos.
- Musk is still in power for eight months now, and the podium’s path to recovery remains “uncertain” given the big decisions he’s made, including mass layoffs and a series of impulsive moves that occur on an almost weekly basis.
- The latest such decision involves limiting the number of tweets a user can read based on their status (verified, unverified and new), a move that appears to defeat the social platform’s primary goal of boosting user engagement and ad revenue.
Banafa added: “Obviously, Musk is not in favor of advertising as Twitter’s primary source of revenue, and instead strongly advocates a subscription-based model, indicated by ticking the coveted blue checkmark, but That and that understanding is firmly established in Silicon Valley.” Social media platforms depend on advertising revenue.
So this appears to be one of Musk’s worst miscalculations. Given that only about 850,000 accounts are currently verified out of 350 million users.
Meta launches Threads, a new tweeting app
the future of twitter
In that same context, the academic advisor at California San Jose State University spoke about the aforementioned inflection point and its implications for the company’s future, saying two events could shape Twitter’s future:
- First, the appointment of a new CEO from NBC brought renewed focus on reintroducing advertising while assuring the company that their ads would not be associated with hateful, racist or otherwise objectionable content.
- Second, the “killer app” Threads meta-ad represents Twitter’s first real competition.
Regarding the competition, the US-based information technology expert continued: “With its integration with nearly 1.4 billion Instagram users and the support of a skilled Meta engineering team, it poses a real threat to Twitter.”
He explained that the upcoming release of “Threads” sparked anticipation of user response, and while many had migrated to other platforms before, those moves proved temporary due to limited ability to absorb the influx of new users.
However, it would be unwise to underestimate Musk. Because it thrives in the face of real competition, as evidenced by its response when other automakers began challenging Tesla’s market dominance, propelling it to exceed all expectations in delivering electric vehicles .
He believes the next few weeks will usher in an interesting chapter as we watch Musk’s reaction to Mark Zuckerberg’s new app, a challenge that could force Musk to take a more cautious approach, taking Act cautiously.
And, Twitter’s newly appointed CEO is likely to have more sway in directing the company’s direction, as evidenced by successfully convincing Musk to increase the tweet reading limit to lessen the impact on most users.
The IT expert added:
- No doubt, the clash of the two tech giants and their very different management styles will provide valuable lessons for this contest.
- The ultimate winner of this competition is still the user, which is the core of both systems.
- The unfolding dynamics among the tech giants will provide valuable insights and knowledge.
- The competition is pushing both companies to innovate and enhance the social media experience.
Meta..a fierce competitor
Furthermore, Hisham Al-Natour, a technology analyst and technology development expert, noted in an exclusive statement to Sky News Arab Economy that since Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company , the challenges facing “Twitter” intensify as he hesitates to make decisions, whether dealing with employees (firing large numbers of employees or moving them between departments) or those directly related to users.
Regarding user-related decisions, he explained that “social networking applications have no value without users and the content they publish on them…the number of users gives value to these applications”, revealing one aspect of the crisis facing Twitter. aspect. In light of this confusion, Al-Natour pointed to the scale of damage Twitter faces as a result of Elon Musk’s policies.
Before the end of March last year, an internal document seen by US media showed that Elon Musk valued Twitter at $20 billion, up from the valuation when he bought the social network a few months ago. for $44 billion.
Among the decisions Al-Natour referred to were those related to verified accounts and the controversies that followed after approving subscriptions to these accounts, as well as those left in the context of Twitter turning into a platform for the dissemination of fake news because ” Anyone with financial means can verify his account, publish any news he wants, and be welcomed by people.”
In related context, another challenge awaiting “Twitter” has to do with the upcoming competition with the Meta Threads app, the Instagram Attached text application.
Before that, Twitter announced a series of restrictions on using the app, including requiring a verified account to use Tweet.deck.
Al-Natour believes the new application will have a strong advantage over Twitter for several reasons. Foremost among these is the fact that Meta and all of its platforms deal with a large number of users, which were and are free, while the company benefits from gathering marketing information.
One of the reasons is that Meta needs to deal with the extensive database provided by its various platforms, as it exists on almost every mobile phone.
He added: “Competition will intensify, especially if AI technologies are integrated into applications, and we see a major revolution in the field.”