Mediaboss Marketing

Episode Transcript:

Marcus Johnson:

This episode is sponsored by Verisk Marketing Solutions. As a marketer, there's too much at stake to ever have to guess at the who, what and when. Verisk Marketing Solutions enriches the consumer data for many of the top insurance carriers, mortgage lenders, banks, and media and ad tech platforms in the US. With the latest identities, attributes, permissions and in-market behaviors, you can confidently acquire, retain and grow your ideal customers. Visit Marketing.Verisk.com for more information.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for hanging out with us for the Behind the Numbers Weekly Listen, an eMarketer podcast made possible by Verisk Marketing Solutions. This is the Friday show. That thinks that moose will always win, is that the conclusion we came to? Moose always win?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I think that's a reasonable-

Marcus Johnson:

Meese always win.

Zach Goldner:

I can attest, yes.

Marcus Johnson:

Rocks always win.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Rocks will always win actually-

Marcus Johnson:

Wrestlers or the geological variety. I'm your host Marcus Johnson, in today's show could Threads replace Twitter?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

The vast majority of the country and the world that is not on Twitter, are they desperately seeking a Twitter clone where things are just civil? Is that why they weren't on Twitter? I don't think so.

Marcus Johnson:

Is TikTok where the internet is going?

Zach Goldner:

If you look at the metrics people are looking at, companies are looking at, they want engagement, and TikTok is quickly becoming one of the highest engaging platforms out there.

Marcus Johnson:

Advertisers and publishers pushed back at the FTC's Click to Cancel proposal.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

So maybe the proposal evolves, as they often do, but there is not a convincing argument that making it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to create one leaves consumers worse off.

Marcus Johnson:

Will ad-supported or ad-free video streaming win? And how items move around the world. Joining me for this episode we have three people, let's meet them. We start with our principle forecasting writer based out of New York City, it's Ethan Cramer-Flood, ladies and gentlemen.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Hey-yo. Summertime.

Marcus Johnson:

There he is. Okay, Will Smith. Was that his song? (singing)

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

We don't have the money to play it, but maybe Victoria can sing it for us. We're also joined by one of our senior analysts on the digital advertising and media scene, based out Virginia, Miss Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Hello, everyone. Happy Friday.

Marcus Johnson:

There she is. Yes, indeed. Finally, we're joined by one of our senior forecasting analysts based ... Actually, Zach, where are you these days?

Zach Goldner:

Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Marcus Johnson:

There he is, it's Zach Goldner.

Zach Goldner:

Hey, Marcus. Hello, listeners.

Marcus Johnson:

Hello, fellow. Welcome to the Weekly Listen, Zach's first time on the show, so welcome to him. Welcome to the listeners. What do we have in store for you? Well, we start with the story of the week, we're talking about Threads, this new app everyone can't help but download, that could replace Twitter maybe. I don't know, we'll talk about it. We then move to the debate of the week where our panel will give the best for and against arguments on each of the three stories we have for you. Then we end with dinner party data, that's where we talk about some random trivia.

But we start with the story of the week. Could Threads replace Twitter is the question. Instagram owner Meta has just released a new companion app to Instagram called Threads, a Twitter rival potentially. It's beaten a record set by OpenAI's ChatGPT app, it appears to have taken the crown as the most rapidly downloaded app ever. Quite easily, quite handedly beating ChatGPT. It had 10-million signups in the first seven hours, 100-million users within a week. It took ChatGPT two months to reach that number. Threads is positioned as a realtime public conversations' app, or a tech space Instagram, if you will. In order to sign up for Threads, users must have an Instagram account. Folks who already had an Instagram account were able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the app as well. It's here, folks. We've been hearing a lot about it. Initial reactions?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Does anyone have a Threads account here?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

No.

Zach Goldner:

We downloaded it to see what it's all about.

Marcus Johnson:

Zach's been enlightened. Talk to us.

Zach Goldner:

Well, I do have to say ... So first of all, I want to get it out of the way, I think we're all really looking forward to the wildly anticipated cage match between the two tech billionaires, Elon versus Zuck. But Zuck decided to take the high road and just copy yet another social media platform, but it's pretty bare bones when comparing it to that of Twitter. But it should be a huge warning and alarm bells should be ringing throughout all of Twitter's offices, and the 20 employees left at Twitter I'm sure are very scared at the moment.

But with that being said, so Threads has the integration factor with the add of Instagram, and what that means is that Threads is able to attach itself to Instagram's user base. If you were to look at it with the US, that's over 100-million US users, 135, and worldwide that's 1.4-billion users that it could attach to. So with that being said, Threads right now is at 100-million global users, and comparing that to Twitter, I believe Twitter's monthly active users is roughly 500. So within five days, it's reached one-fifth of the audience of Twitter. So big alarm sign. As of right now, it still is very much a shell of what Twitter is, but it's going to be a safe haven for that brand, and it's going to continue to take away ad dollars from that of Twitter.

As of right now, Threads is not advertising, but it should be scary for Twitter moving forward as more advertisers may pull some of their ad dollars and go over towards Threads.

Marcus Johnson:

Evelyn, do you have an account?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I do not, and I decided not to make an account because if you create an account, you can not delete that account, that Threads account, without deleting your Instagram account as well. I just was like, "I barely use my Twitter as it is." I haven't tweeted since 2017, so it didn't feel like the need was there to then risk needing to deactivate my Instagram account, which I use very frequently. So maybe I'll create a fake Instagram account just to see what's going on in Threads. But from a personal decision making standpoint, I just am not there yet. Maybe one day.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay, okay. Zach mentioned how many people have jumped on board already is quite staggering, but yes, they made it pretty damn easy. A couple of clicks and you already have an account.

Zach Goldner:

Very easy, just give over all of your personal data, and there you are, a Threads member.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

That data situation is freaky. That's why in the EU Threads has not launched yet, because there are some big question marks there as it pertains to the Digital Market Act. So the data piece, that's also another reason I decided not to make a Threads account. Meta already has enough information on me I think.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Threads, so it launched in over 100 countries, so the US, Australia, Canada, Britain, Japan, but none of the 27 EU countries, because as Evelyn pointed out, tougher data privacy rules. But yeah, easy to set up, and that's why a lot of people have joined. Going to a different space, town square, nightclub, whatever, bar, and they're seeing some familiar friends in that space. You download the new app and existing Instagram folks can import all of their same functionality, and also the same features, their bio, their username, profile photo, follower list. So it's easy to get set up and you don't have to start growing those followers from scratch.

It seemed like Mr. Zuckerberg has had his eye on Twitter for a while, he tried to buy them back in 2008, Twitter said no. Now he's gotten around to creating somewhat of a clone. A lot of people are saying it looks almost identical, as Zach mentioned that it's a scaled down version. Looking at a side-by-side, so in terms of post link it's about double for threads, about 500 characters to the 280 for Twitter. Links, you can have on both. Photos, you can have on both. Five minutes worth of video to 2:20, two-minutes-20-seconds for Twitter. Then there's some stuff that Threads is missing, there's no edit functionality, similar to Twitter in some respects, but no direct messaging, trending stories, hashtags, things like that over on Threads, that Twitter does have. What do you think, Ethan, when you stack Threads up against Twitter? Is this a viable contender for a lot of the share of the microblogging world?

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Yeah. You phrased this as how big of a problem is this for Twitter, and I guess the answer is it's a problem for Twitter, sure. I guess 100-million downloads is moderately impressive, but I have dark cloud negativity infused hot take on this entire endeavor. In that it's not so much about only Twitter, it's about both. I think the most likely outcome for this whole business is that it's going to be a lose-lose proposition for both.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yeah, I can see that.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

It doesn't seem very likely to me that either is going to come out the other side in a good position. This is not a fight that anyone's going to win in a way that will make the rest of us think, "Oh, what a triumph for X or Y." There's not enough people on Twitter that hate Twitter and want to leave it to go over to Threads, to make Threads a booming success. So we know that Twitter is struggling, they're losing people, they're losing time spent, they're losing users and they're obviously losing a lot of advertising revenue, but there is a significant subset of existing Twitter users that are perfectly delighted with the rage infested cesspool of poison and hatred and anger and yelling that is that town square that Elon wanted it to be.

They're happy there, they're not going to leave because that's what they like. Then among the folks that will leave, and have already started leaving because they don't like it, sure, they'll go over to Threads, but how many people? Maybe that could be some millions, but that's not a lot. That's not 100-million, much less a billion, or whatever it would take to really I guess move the needle and make Threads a really bang-up investment on the part of Meta. Then there's the whole grand rest of the world that isn't on Twitter in the first place. So I guess they're assessing are all these people, the vast majority of the country and the world that is not on Twitter, are they desperately seeking a Twitter clone where things are just civil? Is that why they weren't on Twitter?

I don't think so. They want video and images, that's why TikTok is TikTok, that's why everyone is spending all their time where they're spending it. So there could be some folks at the margin that will join, and maybe Meta's internal numbers would consider it a success if they just did okay, some marginal increases in the total umbrella of users and time spent on the Meta empire, and some marginal increases on advertising at the expense of Twitter. Maybe that's a win, but I think both them of them are going to come out smaller than expected.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yeah. I think that makes sense, especially the initial hullabaloo about it, about how quickly people are signing up for it, it is easy to sign up for it, but then the challenge becomes, all right, the novelty's worn off, are people actually going to use this? Especially if they weren't already using Twitter, like you mentioned, Ethan. If they didn't have a reason, a specific use case that Twitter was serving for them, or if they weren't microblogging in the first place, once Threads is old news maybe they'll just stop using it. Maybe they won't delete because they have their Instagram that they're still using, but just having people sign up is not the battle.

Zach Goldner:

That's a great point. My one other point of why I could see Threads really not thriving is that when it comes to Twitter, people are there to go on a debate on politics or technology, and things are going to get thought-provoking. When it comes to that of Threads new app, the way their algorithm is working is it's not pointing you towards that same mind-altering, infuriating drama. It's going to be, once again, more of a brand safe area where brands are going to hop off away from Twitter, it's not going to be the most engaging content. At least, not as of yet. For that reason, I could still see those that are using Twitter to continue to use Twitter, and those that are going to Threads are going to try it out for a little bit until it really doesn't groove, and goes away from you just viewing the largest brands that you follow for it to really have their own sects of people, different groups.

Marcus Johnson:

Ethan, you mentioned ... These are all really great points. Ethan, you mentioned the marginal increases at the expense of Twitter, and that's incredibly true. Marginal being the main word there, because Twitter, for all the headlines it grabs, is still at 0.6%, less than one percentage point of the US digital ad market. It's about four-times smaller than TikTok at this point in US digital ad revenue. So yeah, if they are going to take those dollars, advertisers I'm sure, if they took their Twitter dollars and spread them over the Meta ecosystem that might make it a little bit easier to spend those dollars than having to do it on a different platform, maybe they like hedging their bets across different platforms. As Zach mentioned, no ads for the first year on Threads.

So we'll see, Twitter considering legal action claiming Meta hired dozens of former Twitter employees who had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information that ultimately helped Meta develop what they termed the copycat of the Threads app. So we'll see where that goes, if anywhere. Me and Jasmine Enberg, who's one of our principle analysts covering social media, will be talking about Threads on Monday. So tune into that episode for a slightly deeper dive on this topic.

Ethan Cramer-Flood:

Could I give one more point? A strategical move from Zuckerberg, there's been a lot of talk about the status of Twitter's health fiscally, is it going bankrupt? What's going to happen? As we talk about those incremental dollars, maybe it's incremental when it comes to Meta, it's already got billions and already by far the largest social media platform. But if you take a revenue source away from Twitter, that's trying to get as much money as they can at the moment and are really scrounging for those little ad dollars, if it does go bankrupt, you're taking away a platform that has a dedicated user base, which means more engagement to the Meta properties over time, once again that will translate to more ad revenues and less of a potential threat moving forward.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Fine points indeed, folks. That's all we've got time for the story of the week. Time now for the debate of the week, today's segment, make the case. This is the segment where our panel, Evelyn, Zach and Ethan, present the for and against arguments for each of the following stories based on three news stories. It's two contestants on the face-off per question, also the following takes don't necessarily reflect the analysts personal views, their job is just to present the best case regardless and offer objective analysis. So three questions, as I mentioned. For question one it's Zach going up against Evelyn.

"TikTok is where the internet is going," writes Sara Morrison of Vox. She believes that TikTok is the ultimate example of how our digital world is shifting from seemingly limitless possibilities in choice, the internet of her formative years, into a controlled experience that's optimized to know or decide what we want and then deliver it to us. TikTok, she thinks, is one of the best examples of this change. The social app is designed around discovering content for you and not giving you a platform to find it for yourself. The question is, is TikTok where the internet is going? Zach, I'll start with you. So TikTok is where the internet is going. 60 seconds on the clock, make the case.

Zach Goldner:

Yeah. TikTok is addictive, it's unlimited entertainment, it's an ADHD inducing app where if you look at the metrics people are looking at, companies are looking at, they want engagement. TikTok is quickly becoming one of the highest engaging platforms out there. I like to think about it compared to what cable channels used to be. People would turn on their TV and just flip through the channels without even having a guide, and they just wanted to be given content, not necessarily knowing what that content is. So with that, it's people being force-fed this content and not them deciding upon themselves.

When it comes to somebody like Netflix, there's a study from Nielsen that looks that people spend roughly 10 minutes a day on their smart TVs deciding what to watch. With TikTok, you immediately open the app and you are given your American Home Videos, or you're looking at your old Vine content, stuff that's highly engaging that people really do enjoy. There's a reason why TikTok is the app that everyone talks about.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. You mentioned engagement, so TikTok, close to an hour a day being spent on TikTok in the US by TikTok users. That's just shy of how much time people spend with Netflix in the US. Evelyn, TikTok isn't where the internet is going. One minute on the clock, make the case.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

See original here:
The Weekly Listen: Will Threads replace Twitter, is the internet ... - Insider Intelligence