What the launch of Threads says about the MVP concept

Don’t go against an entrenched business with a half-done product

Welcome to my daily podcast, where I pick at least one insight from the word of publishing and try to explain it in about three minutes.

Generally speaking, social media for me means LinkedIn. I don’t really care about X, or Instagram, or – heaven forbid – Tik Tok. But I like to skim whatever Bo Sacks thinks is interesting, and he circulated “Starting to unravel: Why Threads has struggled to keep up its early momentum” by Pierre de Villiers.

Most of us know that Threads took off like a rocket. In its first week it got about 100 million users.

When Meta launched Threads, there were a lot of reasons to be optimistic about it.

Twitter (now X) seemed to be flailing about, and a lot of people were rooting for its demise and were looking for an alternative.
Threads piggybacked off a huge Instagram userbase. It was very easy to set up a Threads account.
Let’s face it – there’s a lot of hatred for Elon Musk. I really don’t get why, but I also really don’t care. It’s just a fact to be considered.
A lot of people felt Twitter had become too negative, and they wanted a more positive experience. They hoped to find that in a new platform.

I think #4 was a naive hope. The reason Twitter is a mess is because people are a mess.

That reminds of people who are looking for the perfect church. The problem is that as soon as you join it it’s not perfect anymore.

Anyway, after Threads’ meteoric rise, things slowed down, and now it’s not looking that great. Maybe it’s going to follow the Gartner Hype Cycle.

What happened?

There wasn’t much marketing for Threads, and there still isn’t, but in a way it didn’t need marketing because of the Instagram connection.

The bigger issue was that people were unimpressed with its features, so they stopped using it, which becomes a downward spiral, because that kind of platform depends on people using it and believing that other people are using it.

What’s interesting to me about this story is what it says about the very popular MVP concept, which stands for “mininum viable product.” That’s a product with enough features to attract early adopters, validate the product concept, and then improve it through user feedback.

That’s a good idea for a new product, but it doesn’t seem like the right way to tackle an entrenched product, like X.

The Meta team may have thought they had a wave – with the confusion at X – so it was time to surf, even if the product wasn’t up to snuff.

Only time will tell, but right now it’s looking like the launch was premature.

Resources

The Meteoric Rise of Threads And Its Future As A Twitter Clone
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeirevzin/2023/07/10/the-meteoric-rise-of-threads-and-its-future-as-a-twitter-clone/

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
https://www.productplan.com/glossary/minimum-viable-product/

Starting to unravel: Why Threads has struggled to keep up its early momentum
https://www.fipp.com/news/starting-to-unravel-why-threads-has-struggled-to-keep-up-its-early-momentum/

AI and the Gartner Hype Cycle
https://krehbielgroup.com/2023/06/16/ai-and-the-gartner-hype-cycle/