Meta vs Twitter, or why we randomly choose quality over quantity
Opinion by Arsim.Ajeti
arsim@thejournalbiz.com
Meta, or Facebook is widely known for taking ‘calculative risks’ in the markets.
We may recall, when Meta faced their most significant crisis to date, the scandal of ‘Cambridge Analytica’ where they found themselves on the ‘wrong side’ of the story. Allegations were none other than misusing personal data
The breaking story on the survey conducted for pre-election purposes ( US election 2010) prompted the Senate to invite Zuckerberg to the hearing session, twice.
Today, however, Instagram is helping its parent Meta to soar in the market. A recently introduced app called Threads just reached 100 million downloads.
Tweet on threads market reaction
Instagram is helping its parent Meta to soar in the market.
Recently introduced app rivaling @twitter threads just reached 100 million downloads, via Bloomberg#Threads #twitter #meta #instagram pic.twitter.com/m1Ig2QrQkb— The_Journalbiz (@the_journalbiz) July 12, 2023
Chart by Bloomberg
Facebook, for some reason, has a different reaction, whenever there is some crisis on the horizon!
The term ‘crisis control’, or ‘Plan B”, remains uncharted territory for Mr. Zuckenberg.
The procedure otherwise all the Big Corps instigate on the specific situation when dealing with a crisis, be it internally or externally.
Facebook, to make matters worse applies a contrarian approach only on controversial topics, thus their ad hoc response is to announce new products, instead of dealing with the crisis. However, the new product at that time was a cryptocurrency of their own, which soon turned into a fiasco, the project ‘LIBRA’.
Investors were quick to downplay the ongoing scandal at a time, and Facebook retreated from further losses in the stock market.
Facts: Twitter is far more used by journalists than Meta, however, the news is more read in Meta
Pew Research Center
Despite their best efforts, the project backfired by the SEC regulators, and over 80$ billion ended up in a ‘recycle bin’ without ever being launched.
In fact, we have a ‘deja-vu’ scenario, just a couple of years ago.
- Meta faced another threat or market crisis again, now from a rival app from China.
TikTok became their biggest threat, attracting mainly Meta customers. In specific Gen Z consumers globally turned towards using the new trendy app, TikTok.
Meta, as per their usual ‘Modus Operandi initiated their new ‘revolutionary product’ and instead of really rivaling ‘Tiktok’ they simply choose to change or rebrand from ‘Facebook’ to Meta’ to which they spend a staggering 170 B$ according to Statista for the next project, we all know today as the Metaverse
Metaverse, today has simply stalled, but we have another cover-up attempt from Meta, now challenging Twitter for their town hall audience.
Perhaps Meta refuses to learn anything from costly trial & error, or perhaps the statistics from the revenue generated from advertisers worldwide make them a bit arrogant in their innovation pursuit and instead turned them into a copycat par excellence app.
We may never know why, but what we do know is that Meta not only did they copy Tiktok with reels, they also imitated Snapchat with stories, and now they are trying to replicate Twitter with ‘threads’
However, some things are simply embedded within our human behavior and we randomly choose quality over quantity.
From the other side of the spectrum, we have Twitter, that not only has all the necessary ‘app ingredients’ to sustain, grow, and eventually become the go-to app for all important micro-bloggers, who indeed have what to say and share on the platform.
According to the latest report from Bloomberg, Twitter is becoming a bot-free platform, mainly from the harsh and sometimes called ‘radical reforms’ by the media, ever since Twitter’s takeover by Mr. Musk
In addition, the personal dedication of Mr. Musk is an excellent indicator of extra confidence by users and investors combined. Space X and Tesla are best-case examples of excellency in the market, the same applies to their performance as a product.
Key Twitter trends you should know
Statista & Pew Research chart
To conclude, Twitter is in the midst of changes while bloggers, senior politicians, companies, and Innovators continue to use the platform as a primary source of digital communication, considering it a reliable tool for reaching a global audience, but now with less bot interference and spam DM’s.
In short, when we have to choose which product to use for our personal use, we randomly end up choosing quality over quantity, and this in fact, is the fundamental difference between Twitter and the new app, called Threads
