Instagram Threads - Where have we heard that before?

With the upcoming launch of Instagram Threads today, the internet is abuzz with articles on it being a “Twitter killer” with a launch well timed to take on Twitter while it’s going through a rough phase under the new leadership. Netizens can only wait and watch to see how this pans out and while the billionaires discuss locations of an actual cage match on a separate thread, we also get a sense of déjà vu – Instagram Threads, where have we heard that before?

Let’s take a journey back to 2019, when Corona was just a nice beer, there was no Meta and different demographics used social media apps for different purposes. While Facebook still had the maximum users, Instagram was on its way to become the most popular app among the millennials. A lip sync video app called Musical.ly, which was renamed to TikTok in 2018 was getting popular with GenZ as well as the Vine and Dubsmash veterans. Twitter catered to celebrities, Reddit had quite a fixed fan base who preferred text over visuals and the lonely Google Plus had quietly shut down shop. Snapchat was popular with its once-unique stories and disappearing messages, features which Instagram had openly copied in 2016 in an effort to attract users away from Snapchat. In October 2019, Instagram announced the launch of Threads, a camera-first messaging app that helps you stay connected with close friends. And guess what the internet called it then? A Snapchat Killer. Instagram Threads was an attempt to be a direct competitor to Snapchat which opens into the camera. If things went well, we would have possibly seen an Instagram counterpart of Facebook Messenger with users being forced to download a messaging app instead of using Instagram Direct for messaging. Wouldn’t have worked well for some though, downloading a separate app to do the creepy DM slide would be overkill. However, Instagram’s “Snapchat Killer” didn’t live up to its hype and it was shut down in late 2021 with most of its most loved features available in the main app itself.

With the 2023 relaunch of Instagram Threads, Meta has now redirected its crosshairs to Twitter which is pretty much in line with its social media world domination strategy over the years. In ever-ongoing Antitrust investigations against Meta, Mark has been accused of deploying the copy-acquire-kill strategy to wipe out competition. In a nutshell, it refers to killing competitors by either copying what they are doing or acquiring them to gain exclusive access to the entire product. While this raises ethical questions, the strategy is highly influenced by the Innovator’s Dilemma, a book published by Harvard professor and businessman, Clayton Christensen in 1997. It explains how innovations operate on an S curve, starting with a minimal value product, providing exponential value with each subsequent iteration and at some point, plateauing to sustaining technology with minimal value adds with each iteration. While the focus of the market leader is to retain its large user base at the end of the S curve, a new player enters the market targeting a separate user base with more desire to innovate and create disruptive technology. By the time the market leader’s user base gets interested in the new player, it is too late to react or keep up since the new player is now in the middle of the S curve. In Mark’s own words - “If we don’t create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will. Embracing change isn’t enough. It has to be so hardwired into who we are that even talking about it seems redundant. The internet is not a friendly place. Things that don’t stay relevant don’t even get the luxury of leaving ruins. They disappear.”

Does this strategy work? It’s a hit and a miss – sometimes counterintuitive to our traditional hunches on product positioning. The most well-known acquisitions would be Instagram in 2012 ($1bn) and WhatsApp in 2014 ($19bn). In 2013, he tried to buy Snapchat for a reported $3bn but got turned down. So it launched Stories in Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook. Does it dilute the product positioning? Yes. Did it increase views and user engagement in all these platforms? Yes. What else can we copy from Snapchat now that we shot down 2019 Threads? Disappearing messages – let’s launch Vanish Mode on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct. And it’s not only Snapchat. Facebook launched Marketplace to buy and sell items locally, which was a “Craiglist killer”. It launched a Tinder substitute, Facebook Dating which is barely used. In 2018, it launched a Tiktok killer ripoff Lasso which was shut down in 2020 to make way for an inhouse feature on Instagram called Reels. Reels proved to be a huge hit, more so in countries like India where Tiktok was banned by the national Government. With the short video format being a hit, Facebook Newsfeed was revamped to prioritize Facebook Reels. On the other hand, it shut down experimental products like Hobibi (Pinterest rip-off), Neighborhoods (NextDoor rip-off), Super (Cameo rip-off) and Bulletin (Substack rip-off). It continued copying other popular apps with Messenger Rooms (sounds like Zoom), Audio Rooms (isn’t that Clubhouse?) and now Threads (no one remembers the previous Threads anyway).

In these apps, we have seen a pattern. Stories and Reels have been extremely popular when launched as features in existing apps with an already established massive user base. However, users have not been willing to download separate standalone clones like Lasso and Threads which provided the same functions. Will the new Instagram Threads break this trend? Is the timing just right with users looking for a decent alternative? Will it evolve into a tab on Instagram like Reels, stand on its own as a separate app or have a quiet death like its previous namesake? We’ll wait and watch. But as we do, I want to leave you with a parting thought – is user engagement a good enough metric to define success? As Meta strives for massive growth by trying all modes to keep users glued to their screens (and their ads), is there scope for a new player to come in and bring back the intimacy missing in today’s bloated feeds of random short videos?