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Elon Musk better watch out because Mark Zuckerberg is back with a new social network that aims to steal plenty of users away from Twitter. Threads by Instagram is now live and has already grown by tens of millions of users overnight thanks to Meta's easy sign-up process. If you've got an Instagram account, signing up with Threads just takes a few taps.

Threads by Instagram surprisingly launched as a new chat app for Instagram users way back in 2019 and was looking to challenge Snapchat at the time. Now, the relaunch is squarely aimed at the Twitter crowd, likely aiming to help users migrate to a different-yet-similar platform if they're unhappy with the change in management over at the blue bird social network.

Threads can be downloaded on Android or iOS for free. As many had pointed out leading up to the launch of the new social network, the app collects a lot of data and seems to be in line with Meta's normal data collection policies. If you're a Facebook or Instagram user, you're likely already well acquainted with how much data Meta collects on its users.

Threads is fairly simple at the moment, with a Twitter-like UI and a home feed that currently displays a lot of public profiles and doesn't yet seem to have a way to only view accounts you follow.

There's also no desktop interface at the moment although you can install the app on a Windows 11-based PC but it works really well on all the best phones. It also doesn't have a tablet UI so it'll show up as a vertical app on foldables. Despite this, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that over 30 million people have already signed up in less than 24 hours since the app launched.

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Instagram's new Threads social network is live and growing fast - Android Central

Georgia; Marietta When we hear social media, usually, what comes to mind is posting and uploading pictures of family, friends, and fun times. I immediately picture networking and compelling messaging.

Social media is a powerful tool. Presumably, many young people ages 14 to 25 realize how helpful the platforms are for professional and personal use. Statistics show that teenagers and adolescents have mental illnesses from those who spend three hours scrolling through social media. Mental illnesses among young adolescents and teenagers are depression and anxiety disorders. Whether social media is to blame for mental health issues or whether users are responsible for monitoring how and when they use social media is debatable.

Even though social media can be viewed as both a positive and a harmful component depending on a user's perspective, it is still a powerful tool where users can establish lasting professional and personal relationships. I use my social media, Linkedin and Instagram, to advocate for specific causes and encourage people to get civically involved.

I entered the Instagram world in September 2018 during my high school sophomore year. Creating social media ever since I was younger, I recall witnessing my peers getting their accounts formed at such young ages before peaking in high school. I pleaded with my parents to allow me to do the same, but fortunately, they had me wait until high school. Waiting until high school to create an Instagram account made me consider why I should have social media.

Since using social media, I have built lasting connections with Wendy Starland (discovered Lady Gaga), Trinity Rose, New York Times Author Harlan Cohen, and Gina Rodriguez, who gave me a shout-out at age 16 for encouraging people to vote for Georgia's 2018 governor campaign. The following individuals are influential individuals I have met through social media and have sincerely connected with to demonstrate that anything is possible if one knows how to leverage these platforms for networking and does not shy away from being authentic.

My social media purpose from the start was to use it as a platform to demonstrate community involvement and empower users to discover their potential and then pursue it by getting involved and putting their passion into existence. Social media has enabled me to organize and mobilize around voting and immigration rights and demonstrate how to be more than words. In addition to showcasing their involvement within the community, users can post content that encourages others to become involved and provides instructions for how to do so.

Consistent posting and engaging with others is critical to growing an account. It takes more than effort to build a platform but also requires patience and a focus on one's actions instead of the actions of others. Therefore, before pressing Create an Account, I encourage those young folks to think about their intentions and goals for setting up an account. That way, people can use social media with a purpose and inspire those around them to do the same.

Ashleigh Ewald (she/her/hers) is a Georgia-based journalist who attends Oglethorpe University. Follow her on IG: @ashleighewaldofficial.

Edited by NaTyshca Pickett

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The Power of Social Media for Mobilizing and Networking - YR Media

An era of the internet is ending, and were watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battles over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but nope.) TikTok remains ascendent and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobodys on Facebook anymore.

You could argue, I suppose, that this is just the natural end of a specific part of the internet. We spent the last two decades answering a question what would happen if you put everyone on the planet into a room and let them all talk to each other? and now were moving onto the next one. It might be better this way. But the way it has all changed, and the speed with which it has happened, has left an everybody-sized hole in the internet. For all these years, we all hung out together on the internet. And now thats just gone.

Why is this all happening right now? Lots of reasons, actually, most of them at least somewhat defensible. The economy has gone sour, and after more than a decade of low interest rates and access to nearly unlimited and nearly free money, companies are finding their funding sources to be fewer and more finicky than ever. Those investors are also asking for real returns on that funding, so all these companies have had to switch from growth at all costs to actually make some money. Few social networking companies have ever made real money, and so theyre scrambling for new features and pivoting to whatever smells like quarterly results.

The rise of AI is also sending all these companies into a tizzy. Large language models from companies like OpenAI and Google are built on top of data collected from the open web. Suddenly, having all your users and content publicly available and easily found has gone from a growth hack to capitalistic suicide; companies around the industry are closing their walls, because theyre hoping to sell their data to AI providers rather than have it all scraped for free. Much of Reddits current chaos started with CEO Steve Huffman saying that the company realized that the platform is filled with good information, and we dont need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free. On Saturday, Elon Musk introduced Twitters new login gate and view count restrictions to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.

Add it all up, and the social web is changing in three crucial ways: Its going from public to private; its shifting from growth and engagement, which broadly involves building good products that people like, to increasing revenue no matter the tradeoff; and its turning into an entertainment business. It turns out theres no money in connecting people to each other, but theres a fortune in putting ads between vertically scrolling videos that lots of people watch. So the social media era is giving way to the media with a comments section era, and everything is an entertainment platform now. Or, I guess, trying to do payments. Sometimes both. It gets weird.

As far as how humans connect to one another, whats next appears to be group chats and private messaging and forums, returning back to a time when we mostly just talked to the people we know. Maybe thats a better, less problematic way to live life. Maybe feed and algorithms and the global town square were a bad idea. But I find myself desperately looking for new places that feel like everyones there. The place where I can simultaneously hear about NBA rumors and cool new AI apps, where I can chat with my friends and coworkers and Nicki Minaj. For a while, there were a few platforms that felt like they had everybody together, hanging out in a single space. Now there are none.

Whats next appears to be group chats and private messaging and forums

Id love to follow that up with, and heres the new thing coming next! But Im not sure there is one. Theres simply no place left on the internet that feels like a good, healthy, worthwhile place to hang out. Its not just that theres no sufficiently popular place; I actually think enough people are looking for a new home on the internet that engineering the network effects wouldnt be that hard. Its just that the platform doesnt exist. Its not LinkedIn or Tumblr, its not upstarts like Post or Vero or Spoutable or Hive Social. Its definitely not Clubhouse or BeReal. It doesnt exist.

Long-term, Im bullish on fediverse apps like Mastodon and Bluesky, because I absolutely believe in the possibility of the social web, a decentralized universe powered by ActivityPub and other open protocols that bring us together without forcing us to live inside some companys business model. Done right, these tools can be the right mix of everybodys here and youre still in control.

The fediverse isnt ready to take over yet

But the fediverse isnt ready. Not by a long shot. The growth that Mastodon has seen thanks to a Twitter exodus has only exposed how hard it is to join the platform, and more importantly how hard it is to find anyone and anything else once youre there. Lemmy, the go-to decentralized Reddit alternative, has been around since 2019 but has some big gaps in its feature offering and its privacy policies the platform is absolutely not ready for an influx of angry Redditors. Neither is Kbin, which doesnt even have mobile apps and cautions new users that it is very early beta software. Flipboard and Mozilla and Tumblr are all working on interesting stuff in this space, but without much to show so far. The upcoming Threads app from Instagram should immediately be the biggest and most powerful thing in this space, but Im not exactly confident in Metas long-term interest in building a better social platform.

So if not that, what? Theres a good case to be made for apps like WhatsApp and Signal, which at least bring some extra privacy muscle to the table. WhatsApp has been adding more social features over time, particularly Channels, a one-to-many way for creators and brands to talk to all their followers at once. (Telegram is also doing some interesting stuff in this space.) But thats not social, thats a news feed. These are still chat apps, meant for talking to one or a few people at a time.

Discord is probably the tool best-suited to capture users social needs right now. Its definitely the best Reddit alternative we have. Its a clever mix of chat app and broadcast tool, a place where lots of like-minded people could conceivably hang out and connect. But, uh, have you ever been in a Discord with thousands of people? Its pure chaos, and requires you to either devote your life to keeping up or resolve yourself to missing everything. Discords moderation tools are a mess, too, and everyones still mad about changing their username.

For all its mess, the social networking era did a uniquely good job of just putting people together in a single place. You didnt have to pick a server or declare your interests ahead of time; you just showed up, set a password, and got to work. Because everyone was together, these platforms were able to make it trivially easy to find people you like and content that interests you. They were able to learn about you over time, and proactively show you those people and that content before you even had to ask.

This all, of course, came with huge downsides. Retweets and quote tweets made it easy for good content to travel, but also made it easy to mass-harass anyone on Twitter. Metas knowledge of its users makes your Explore page more interesting, and only extends the dossier on you available to advertisers. Im not sure its possible to have the good without the bad, and I think the bad might outweigh the good. (As a white guy in America, I also experience the bad far less than many users, and I suspect Id feel differently about the end of this era if I werent quite so privileged here.) But I cant help but think its possible to at least do better.

Maybe we should all embrace the downfall of social networks, and maybe my (and our) need for a global water cooler is just a vestigial feeling well all be rid of in a few years. But even before this era fully ends, before Twitter and Reddit turn into MySpace and Friendfeed and basically disappear from my life, I find myself longing for what they once were. Still are, maybe, just not for long. I miss everybody, and I dont know if Ill ever find them again.

Excerpt from:
So where are we all supposed to go now? - The Verge

Another day, another social media platform has launched. Yes, enter 'Threads', a potential new contender for the Twitter crown, launched by Meta, parent company of Instagram and Facebook.

A virtual battle of sorts between Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Threads is the latest digital gauntlet thrown down - and you might be wondering whether, as a leader in the HR space, you and your staff should be jumping on the bandwagon.

You also might have sighed with exhaustion at the very thought of another social media platform, and you won't have been alone, especially as you probably saw the annoucement of the new 'Threads' on either Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Now, LinkedIn is a more unusual option. It doesn't describe itself and isn't described as social media. But the growing trend for confessional posts, selfies and 'my dog' pics on there does imply that it's being used more like a social media platform, even if not in name.

The same is true on the flip side - where once Instagram was just about your dinner photos, it's now undeniably a networking tool, and TikTok is a rising star in the recruitment and HR fields.

Entrepreneur and host of the Diary of a CEO podcast, Steven Bartlett, posted on LinkedIn 'Something Ive thought about for a while. Social media ISNT harmful its HOW were using it.'

Where once Instagram was just about your dinner photos, it's now undeniably a networking tool, and TikTok is a rising star in the recruitment and HR fields.

Bartlett has a strong point - it's not the what, it's the how. We can lurk and scroll on myriad apps and groups, but there are key ways to maximise our time, and what we share (and why) to build connections and grow in the leadership and HR space.

Remember ClubHouse? (You're forgiven if you don't!). Threads has a similar feeling - a launch, a new shiny platform, a new place to hang out.

Lucy Hall, founder of Digital Women, describes it as 'shiny penny syndrome'. She says: "I didnt think we need anymore, there are so many channels popping up and people get shiny penny syndrome when actually really sticking to a platform and working on content and working out what youre trying to achieve will beat jumping on new things.

I think the difference with threads is that its part of Meta and they have such a huge audience, so if it integrate with a following you already have on Instagram or facebook it could really get big."

Which brings us even deeper into the 'curate what you have' argument.

Twitter expert Carrie Eddins (@blondepreneur) explains: "Genuinely whilst I understand a lot of people have been disappointed with what has been happening with Twitter over the last year, I dont see there is any need for an additional platform like Threads. It just sounds like another thing on my to do list.

Pragmatically speaking leaders already have enough to do; or for their teams to do so this would just add extra work; to an unproven platform. I am not sensing that this would be smart move; as even if people to go for it; will their established connections follow? Will let media? Will key people that they are invested in communicating with.

Theres no guarantee. For me, I am staying where I am, and learning more about how it will improve my 'Twitter Game' and curate my feed a lot more which is possible with Twitter lists for example making the whole experience a lot smoother and easier."

Sarah Clay works with companies and entrepreneurs to help them maximise the powers of LinkedIn to build themselves a brand, generate content and find potential leads.

She argues that: "So many business leaders on LinkedIn are simply not taking advantage of the many things that it can do for them. LinkedIn isnt social media: its a tool for learning, for finding people and it is the biggest networking event in the world open 24/7! Almost everyone who comes to me has no idea of the vast potential of the platform.

"With only 1% of users regularly posting on LinkedIn, thousands of business leaders are missing out on showcasing themselves as thought leaders in the space where their potential clients, employers and collaborators hang out.

Is your feed feeding you the right content? Could it be working harder to show you what's out there from other companies and HR leaders?

The most common use of LinkedIn is the search function but most people, again, dont realise how powerful it can be for them. The opportunities to find relevant people using that tiny blue rectangle are beyond most peoples thinking I know this as I am often told youve blown my mind, Sarah, when I walk people through it."

As a leader looking to stand out in the HR space, here are three things you could try today:

1) Update your bio and 'about' section on LinkedIn. Are they clear? Are you projecting your best self and describing what you do?

2) Take time to curate your connections and following. Not those following you, but the people and brands you follow. Is your feed feeding you the right content? Could it be working harder to show you what's out there from other companies and HR leaders?

3) Be clear on your purpose. Are you using social media and LInkedIn just 'because'? What do you want and need to get from it, and what does your company want and need you to get from it, too?

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Leaders don't need another social media platform - we need to use ... - HR Grapevine

The Gist

I was once all in on Twitter. A colleague told me about the service, and I created my account in December 2007. The service was a bit clunky in the early days. Users created ad-hoc conventions (e.g., at-mentions, retweets, hashtags, etc.) and it was neat when Twitter formalized these things as platform features.

My initial focus was on curating and sharing industry-related content, which helped augment my personal brand. Entire communities assembled around hashtags. There was #eventprofs for event professionals and #CMWorld for content marketers who were part of Content Marketing Institutes community.

It was magical to turn Twitter connections into IRL (in real world) friends. My wife worked at Twitter, and I got to visit Twitter HQ in San Francisco. My wife bought me a customized jacket from the Twitter Store. It had the Twitter logo and my Twitter username stitched onto it I still wear it.

Things have changed a lot in the past 12 months. Facebook pivoted to the metaverse, Twitter had an ownership change, and state governments in the United States started to ban TikTok.

Let that all sink in.

As an active user of social platforms, it all feels so different these days. So where are things headed?

Social media platforms arent going away, but I expect slower growth in new users and a plateau (or worse) in monthly active users. When Twitter was acquired last year, a number of my marketing friends deleted their accounts because they didnt agree with the views of the new owner.

Others kept their accounts, but log in much less frequently if at all. Still others moved their time and attention to competing services like Mastodon, Post and Bluesky. I kept my account active, havent signed up for competing platforms and still check Twitter daily. However, Im posting less frequently and the serendipity of meeting interesting new people has dried up.

When social networks see their user base decline, the network effect goes into reverse. More value is attained when users can follow and connect with lots of other users. In addition, advertisers, who are responsible for the majority of revenue to most social platforms, may go elsewhere if there are less users to market to.

Ian Bogost wrote a thought-provoking piece for The Atlantic (in 2022) titled The Age of Social Media Is Ending. Bogost begins the article:

Its over. Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. Mark Zuckerbergs empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. Elon Musks takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform (or at least to tweet a lot about doing so). Its never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end and soon.

Bogost noted that the original mission of social networking was to form connections and that around 2009 (i.e., when the smartphone was introduced), social networking became social media in other words, sharing and publishing content.

Bogost ended his piece by encouraging the elimination of social media. To me, its a bit of an extreme take:

To win the soul of social life, we must learn to muzzle it again, across the globe, among billions of people. To speak less, to fewer people and less often and for them to do the same to you, and everyone else as well. We cannot make social media good, because it is fundamentally bad, deep in its very structure. All we can do is hope that it withers away, and play our small part in helping abandon it.

I dont want to see social media go away entirely. I still enjoy it, both in the opportunity to share content and the chance to consume content others share.

But heres the thing.

I think businesses should stay active and engaged on social media, but its time to pursue other channels to drive website visits, leads and opportunities.

Related Article:Twitter Blue: Is Twitter Verification Worth It for Marketers?

The newsfeeds of Facebook and Twitter were the ultimate all-you-can-eat meal: everyone from everywhere all at once, posting about every topic imaginable. It was convenient for users and convenient for advertisers. This all-in-one-place world is splintering, as people prefer a la carte dishes to a buffet.

Im seeing a lot of activity in:

A good portion of my free time has shifted here. Im in a Messenger chat with college friends, a group SMS with extended family, a group SMS with friends and a Slack community of content marketers. Most of these I check daily and in some, check and post multiple times a day.

These communities present a challenge to businesses, as most dont offer vehicles for advertising or sponsorship.

Related Article:How Social Media Marketing Has Changed This Year

The shift from monolithic social platforms to targeted communities provides businesses with a glimpse of the future. And thats to establish, foster and grow your own community around the mission of your business. Before discussing tactics and technologies for your community, answer these questions:

From here, I recommend a focus group approach where you plan small, intimate gatherings (e.g., coffee, cocktails or dinner) in particular cities. Assess things like attendance and engagement at each gathering. This approach lets you test the waters on the communitys viability without betting the house on it. It also lets you refine and adapt.

Learn how you can join our contributor community.

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Adapting to the Changing Social Media Landscape - CMSWire