Threads is taking the first steps to separate itself from Instagram

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has announced that Threads is now entering a more independent phase, where it could eventually break away from Instagram completely.

Maybe.

Yesterday Mosseri announced that:

Wow, people on Threads, a very different platform that allows for a very different use case than Instagram, don’t want to follow the exact same accounts on both platforms. Who would have thought that?

This has long been a problem with Threads, that it is so closely tied to Instagram, meaning you often get recommendations for posts on Threads that are based on profiles you’ve interacted with on IG. That can be annoying, because each platform is so different. The profiles I followed on Twitter, for example, don’t come close to the profiles I engage with on Facebook, and the same goes for pretty much every other app, and actually it’s somewhat surprising that Mosseri treats this as if it’s some kind of revelation.

Although it’s also worth noting that Threads will still use your IG chart for post recommendations. Mosseri only says it’s removing IG-related recommendations from your onboarding experience, but it still wants to use Instagram’s knowledge about you when building your For You feed. That means you’ll still get Instagram-related post recommendations there.

Which in my opinion and experience is not the way Threads should go, but then again, Threads has been able to grow so quickly because of the connection with IG. And Meta’s real interest is in seeing the numbers go up, so it’s hard to argue that Threads might be on the wrong track as its growth momentum continues to gain.

Mosseri also noted today that more than 15 million people have signed up for the app this month alone, with two weeks to go. At that rate, if all these new accounts become regular users, Threads will be on track to surpass X number of users sometime in the first few months of the new year.

So while many people have criticized Threads’ substantive approach, especially its anti-political stance, the numbers don’t lie. And even if the majority of those users are refugees from

Although it still feels like it still needs some refinement.

Indeed, the problem with Threads is Meta’s resistance to political content, while still amplifying recommended content way behind the times, often leaving your timeline feeling stale, rather than keeping your finger on the pulse of the moment, as Twitter imagines felt at its peak.

As noted by Will Oremus, it feels like Threads is trying to be a “TikTok for Text,” trying to increase engagement by showing you the most entertaining content, rather than the most relevant. But that’s not what many people seem to want from a text-based social app.

But it reflects broader trends in social media engagement, where apps have moved from highlighting content based on your social graph to using algorithms to show you the most engaging and entertaining content, based on what their systems understand your interests. TikTok has driven this shift by demonstrating that algorithms are now smart enough to understand users’ interests, so users no longer have to follow profiles because the system doesn’t need your explicit input to understand what you want to see more of .

And that works on TikTok, where it’s all about showing you the best video clips, while it also worked for Facebook and IG. But Threads feels like it needs a more specific focus on real-time updates and the most relevant posts of the moment, as opposed to what gets the most engagement.

Because using post-engagement as a proxy means you can only serve content after the fact, and that doesn’t work for breaking news. There’s no restriction on ‘political’ content either, and it still feels like Threads needs to fine-tune its balance on both elements if it wants to displace Twitter and become a new home for that kind of activity.

Although that also assumes that’s Meta’s goal, which might not be correct. Meta has said it wants to tackle X with Threads, but it also says it wants Threads to be a “friendlier” version of that experience.

Which again points to that ‘TikTok of Text’ approach, where Meta actually wants all the involvement but none of the problems that come with a more news-based approach, including more challenging moderation, increased risk of disinformation, concerns around manipulation , etc.

So really it all depends on how exactly Meta wants to approach this. But it seems, for example, that Bluesky is only gaining popularity now because of Threads’ failure as a real-time news source, which was highlighted on Election Day.

And while Bluesky only has 15 million total users, that’s still 15 million people who could have been Threads users if the company had taken the right approach.

And it feels like Threads has a great opportunity as a real-time news and information source.

X is now too biased in this regard and offers no real protection against misinformation (Community Notes is not good enough in this regard), while Bluesky is too small, although as noted it is growing. But right now, Threads has the best chance to become that real-time news discussion space. But it also requires Meta to assume some risk in her approach.

I think Meta will eventually change course in the wake of the election, and it’s interesting to see it take the first steps in retuning Threads around its own, distinct use case.

But that’s really what needs to happen, with Meta putting more emphasis on real-time relevance versus light entertainment.