After countless articles about the social media platform Threads, it finally appears that things have cooled off. Now most latest articles already concluded that this social platform was a fad. It's erroneous as momentarily only wishful thinking is what can sustain the prediction that Threads will surely fade rapidly.

For the most part, Zuckerberg managed to get most things right when he released this new social platform.

Let's look at what he achieved where others have failed:

1 He created ample momentum, such as his platform being the fastest-growing product with 100 million in five days. The previous record holder was ChatGpt with two months, and besides Threads and ChatGpt the rest of the top ten growing products needed years to reach 100 million users. Also, Meta owns 4 of 10 products in that top.

2 The app released was feature complete, very performant(probably the best performance of all micro-blogging apps I've seen), simple, and intuitive.

3 Even though the app stands completely centralized as of this time. It came with the promise of some kind of decentralization, by implementing ActivityPub. ActivityPub in this situation is the perfect choice for Meta since it still allows a lot of control on one aspect that's core to social media, that is the actual posts.

4 He released a minimal web implementation that he promised will be upgraded to support all features. Releasing this stub of a web app was probably a purposeful mistake, as the idea was to inflate the mobile downloads.

5 Being very open about addressing user suggestions and fully delegating all decisions to a dedicated threads team. Pledges were made to have a follow-only feed, a fully functioning web app, delink-ing Instagram identity from threads identity, and, of course, implementing ActivityPub.

Now what were some big mistakes you may ask?

1 Not having a functional web app (again probably on purpose since he wanted to inflate mobile app downloads), but the reality is that users don't like apps, so it's absolutely critical to have your web app working for mobile devices. The avg number of apps on phones has decreased from 2019 top of 23 to around 21 and something in 2023. While the number of devices has exploded there are around 6.6 billion devices out there. That's why all these large companies had to implement web apps since it's true that around 70% of traffic comes from mobile but that's consumer traffic. Many creators still prefer desktops, and even the normie consumer still likes the browser many times over an app even on mobile. Soon tech that allows web apps to be able to deliver push notifications directly to phones will be widespread, and in a good amount of cases a web app is able to do everything a native app can, so a native app will not be that superior. The native mobile app must exist to increase popularity but not necessarily as the main source of traffic.

2 Blocking VPN and EU users on the basis that EU legislation is not clear. In the words of some EU commissioners, the EU legislation is very clear is just that Meta doesn't like it.

That's pretty much it in terms of mistakes. At least in my view, he didn't do many, some may add the fact that the app collects too much data but is expected as many major platforms also push the user to use mobile apps since they can scrap much more data this way, which leads to better targeting which leads to better monetization.

In my opinion, Zuckenberg has great expertise when it comes to ads, and that's what has made most of his apps profitable because to this day the revenue stream from ads is basically what produces 90/100 of revenue for both Meta and Google and this allows this platforms to experiment or do aggressive and anit-competitive acquisitions and mergers.

Now what is the method to determine if Threads will be successful? That's very simple we just wait for a year or so and assert the following: if in a year they have like 80-100M active users then at least for me it's a success if they will stay at 10-20M then is somewhat of a failure I am guessing this simple way of measuring Threads success will be used by advertisers too.

The reality is that this micro-blogging scene is in soul-search mode and it's been like that for a very long time, even before Twitter went downhill after it was bought. Many "Web3" social media appeared for this reason but, many creators don't like to manage multiple platforms and, the chances of only one taking the crown is still very much a possibility.

Ask yourself, if one of these platforms reaches half a billion active users or 1 billion(as Zuckerberg already stated this dream publicly), then why would a creator go through much trouble to set up another 15 accounts on who knows what network?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate small niche networks, I see them as less full of crap, and maybe there's even some knowledge to be gained on such networks, but at the end of the day, many creators don't seek knowledge they seek the ability to reach large audiences, engagement and ultimately fame and money.