Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI SCROLL: Breaking down the "Threads has no creators" discourse

Transcript

MINI SCROLL: Breaking down the "Threads has no creators" discourse · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  Hi everyone, welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
• 0:03
  culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
• 0:06
  media, the creator economy and the digital space every Monday
• 0:09
  through Thursday. I'm your host, Lauren Meisner,
• 0:12
  the founder of the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
• 0:18
  Happy Tuesday everyone. July 9th.
• 0:21
  OK, so I have two stories that I have been asked to cover.
• 0:26
  One of them is Tara Yummy and the other one I feel like maybe
• 0:30
  I will leave as a little bit of like a secret surprise, but I
• 0:35
  need a bit more time to like properly dive into like what's
• 0:38
  going on, especially for the second one.
• 0:41
  So I'm going to hopefully be bringing you guys those
• 0:43
  tomorrow. So today's mini scroll will be
• 0:46
  quite light because I just need a bit more time to like dive in.
• 0:50
  And I was going to have two stories for you guys today.
• 0:53
  But Crystal, I was telling her about like something that I was
• 0:56
  going to do for mini scroll. I was talking to her about it
• 0:59
  this morning and she was like, do not give him the
• 1:03
  satisfaction. So basically Crystal is going to
• 1:05
  kill me for saying this, but I was going to cover Ashton Earl
• 1:08
  possibly dating John Summit, the DJ.
• 1:11
  And I was like, do you know anything about John Summit?
• 1:13
  Like he's apparently a DJ. I had never even heard of him
• 1:16
  until this Ashton Earl stuff and Crystal was like, do not cover
• 1:20
  this. Don't give him that
• 1:21
  satisfaction. That's exactly what he wants
• 1:23
  because it is true. He has an album coming out on
• 1:25
  July 12th. So this is definitely giving
• 1:27
  like PR vibes. She's like he's just some DJ
• 1:29
  that college girls thinks hot like don't give him that
• 1:31
  satisfaction of like properly reporting on him.
• 1:34
  So this is me not not reporting on that story.
• 1:40
  OK, but the actual story that I have for you guys today, like I
• 1:43
  said today is a bit light, but I feel like my episodes have been
• 1:46
  like quite long. So, you know, we're due for like
• 1:48
  a little light one. I wanted to talk about the
• 1:51
  discourse going on online right now about Threads and if they
• 1:55
  have or if it has a creator problem.
• 1:58
  So journalist Taylor Lorenz, who has also been on this podcast,
• 2:03
  she posed this question recently in an article for The Washington
• 2:07
  Post and also on her own Threads account, basically asking where
• 2:12
  are all the Threads creators. So Threads doesn't seem to have
• 2:16
  any like native creators. No one so far has seemed to have
• 2:20
  built their entire platform off of Threads.
• 2:24
  And that's quite different to Twitter.
• 2:25
  I know, I don't know. I know a lot of people like
• 2:27
  stopped using Twitter a long, long time ago, like way pre Elon
• 2:31
  Musk. But Twitter was quite unique in
• 2:33
  the sense that like, you could be a Twitter creator, you could
• 2:36
  be a Twitter, you could be Twitter famous, basically like a
• 2:38
  Twitter personality. And no one else on the rest of
• 2:41
  the Internet would know that. And that didn't necessarily
• 2:45
  translate to followers anywhere else.
• 2:48
  And Threads so far doesn't really have that.
• 2:50
  Like, people are not like a native Threads creators.
• 2:54
  And she suggests that the reason for that primarily is because
• 2:59
  Threads hasn't had a breakthrough viral moment.
• 3:01
  Like there's been nothing like a meme, like nothing super viral
• 3:06
  culturally has happened on the platform for people to have that
• 3:10
  sense of urgency to join and to start using it consistently.
• 3:15
  So I saw a lot of discourse on Threads about how people were
• 3:18
  like, yeah, it has a lot of like monthly active users, but it
• 3:20
  doesn't have a lot of daily active users, which is the
• 3:23
  problem. I mean, Jordy and I talked about
• 3:25
  this in our episode when Threads launched.
• 3:27
  Like it's not just that. It's it's that like the people
• 3:31
  who use Instagram who are like Instagram famous.
• 3:34
  It is a completely different ball game to be growing a
• 3:38
  platform or like growing an audience on a text based
• 3:42
  platform than it is on like a visual platform.
• 3:44
  Even video platform like Instagram and reels has been.
• 3:48
  I mean, I'm sure you guys remember when when threads first
• 3:51
  launched and like it was just filled, filled with people
• 3:56
  posting the most embarrassing shit ever.
• 3:59
  People being like so bored today, Ha ha.
• 4:02
  Is this thing on ha ha, like I can't, I never go on Threads.
• 4:08
  I just get those like recommendations on my Instagram
• 4:11
  and that's how I'll like go into Threads.
• 4:13
  But honestly, Threads is literally just filled with
• 4:16
  people who are like Instagram influencers complaining about
• 4:19
  Instagram. Like that's all that Threads is,
• 4:22
  at least for me. And that's another part of the
• 4:24
  problem is that Threads is incredibly siloed.
• 4:27
  So with Twitter, you could have like a viral moment or, you
• 4:32
  know, you could report on something and it would get gain
• 4:34
  a lot of traction and get shown to like essentially all of
• 4:38
  Twitter. It was like a town square,
• 4:39
  right? Threads does not operate like
• 4:41
  that. It is much more siloed.
• 4:42
  So the content that you're posting is like for a specific
• 4:46
  audience, like it's for your followers.
• 4:48
  And there's not the same level of like amplification or
• 4:52
  shareability. Posts exist much more in a
• 4:54
  vacuum. So like there might be good
• 4:56
  discourse on Threads but I don't see it.
• 4:59
  All I see is a bunch of Instagram influencers
• 5:02
  complaining about Instagram all the time and then obviously like
• 5:05
  metas stance on news and politics in general like that is
• 5:09
  going to kill any opportunity for threads to actually thrive
• 5:15
  because that's what made Twitter popular was people being able to
• 5:19
  share news and commentary and opinion about current affairs in
• 5:23
  all types of industries. So I want to read Taylor's
• 5:26
  thread on this, her threads thread.
• 5:29
  She said the biggest creators on Twitter, for example, were never
• 5:32
  the biggest creators on YouTube. They were primarily curators who
• 5:35
  were incredibly good at surfacing valuable information
• 5:38
  and news. Threads has not done much at all
• 5:41
  to cultivate those types of creators.
• 5:43
  However, this goes back to my original point that Threads
• 5:46
  hasn't had its breakout moment. That's the most important part
• 5:49
  here that is being missed. Without a breakout moment that
• 5:52
  shows people basically how to post, you won't get a crop of
• 5:55
  native creators with any sort of reach.
• 5:57
  That's why those breakout early moments were so crucial to
• 6:00
  platforms like YouTube, Twitter, IG, etcetera.
• 6:03
  Threads has not had its breakout moment and that is the
• 6:06
  fundamental problem. And it won't have a breakout
• 6:09
  moment when it's stifling the types of creators slash content
• 6:12
  that performs best on Twitter like platforms, people posting
• 6:16
  timely information. I mean, yeah, I, I think it's,
• 6:19
  it was a wild strategy that Twitter, sorry, that Threads,
• 6:24
  that Meadow would launch Threads.
• 6:26
  And then what was it maybe like six months later?
• 6:29
  Turn off political content for everyone and you have to like
• 6:32
  opt in to see political or like newsworthy content.
• 6:36
  And of course there's like all this impending like Meta news
• 6:40
  band stuff going on in Australia.
• 6:42
  I'm Canadian. I know that happened in Canada
• 6:44
  recently as well. They Meta basically, or
• 6:46
  Instagram basically limits you from seeing anything that's
• 6:49
  considered news because they won't strike deals with the
• 6:51
  government anyways. It's like a whole mess.
• 6:54
  And yeah, I, I thought that this was interesting discourse.
• 6:58
  I know that Jordy and I did a full episode on why we thought
• 7:00
  Threads would fail. I wouldn't say it's like fully
• 7:03
  failed. And I do think it's gaining a
• 7:05
  bit of cultural relevance just because I think so many
• 7:09
  journalists are so exhausted with Twitter.
• 7:12
  Like Twitter is like unusable now.
• 7:14
  So I think the people who were like, really popular on Twitter
• 7:17
  initially, they went to Blue Sky and Blue Sky seemed to be quite
• 7:20
  promising, but they didn't strike fast enough because their
• 7:23
  platform wasn't ready. Like, it just couldn't have the
• 7:26
  influx of user base that I think it needed to at the time.
• 7:30
  And it was like invite only. And I don't know, like people, I
• 7:33
  mean, as far as I can tell, like Blue Sky is, I don't know what's
• 7:36
  going on there. So I do feel like Threads has an
• 7:40
  opportunity because I do think a lot of people are starting to
• 7:44
  come around to the idea of posting on Threads.
• 7:47
  And I think a lot of the journalists who were so valuable
• 7:50
  to Twitter and made Twitter what it was have started slowly
• 7:54
  posting more and more on Threads.
• 7:56
  But I agree, it needs this one cultural breakout moment.
• 7:59
  The problem is it's never going to have that if you can't post
• 8:04
  like timely current affairs, things that are called
• 8:06
  considered like quote, UN quote political content, because
• 8:09
  that's also a completely vague label like what's considered
• 8:13
  political. You know, you could consider a
• 8:15
  lot of what we cover political 'cause I'm talking about things
• 8:17
  like trad wives and things like that, right?
• 8:19
  Like it, it's such a broad vague statement that doesn't have a
• 8:23
  lot of clear parameters around it.
• 8:25
  I wouldn't say Threads is a complete write off anymore.
• 8:29
  I did very much feel that way a year ago.
• 8:33
  But Meta is not doing itself any favors with the decisions that
• 8:39
  it's making in terms of the type of content that it prioritizes
• 8:42
  to make Threads actually a successful platform.
• 8:46
  So that's my tea on Threads and obviously my slight tea, not tea
• 8:51
  on Ashton Earl may be dating DJ John Summit.
• 8:55
  Anyways, guys, thank you so much for listening to Mini Scroll.
• 8:57
  Like I said, tomorrow's episode is going to be hopefully a
• 8:59
  banger, so I'm excited to bring you guys that.
• 9:03
  But as always, Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 9:06
  It helps me so much. It helps me grow.
• 9:09
  I love you guys and I will talk to you tomorrow.
• 9:11
  Bye.