If you have been living a disconnected life over the past few weeks, you may not have heard about the new social media network from Meta (the guys behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc) called Threads.

It's a new app which has been created to directly target twitter and indeed has a very similar and familiar feeling interface. Having joined it straight away I can predict two things;

1. It will appeal to the masses who are leaving the twitterverse due to all the nonsense which is going on based on how Elon Musk is feeling on a daily basis.
   
   
2. I can't see myself using it for business or please.

Re point 1, time will tell and let's be honest, it's not like Meta is particularly high in public opinion as far as I see it - more of a necessary evil, trying to make money out of (and pay for) people's online communications. It is indeed a bit of a liberty that anyone try and monetise a free to all set of tools

As for point 2, I really enjoyed being on twitter around 10 years ago when I was building my business. I wouldn't say it's ever been a particularly valuable area for Digity or our clients but it was a good online networking and education ground for me. With that in mind, I therefore don't really see what Threads is going to offer which will change my mind on that - or even convince me to give it any time to give it a try. As with the whole meta set-up, there could be some interesting advertising opportunities that come from it but right now for where our company is focused and indeed, many of our clients, I just don't see the fit.

Should your business be on Threads?

Guess what my answer is here..."it depends". Sorry to sit on the fence but let me put it this way, my advice re social media networks never differs - if your target audience are active there, you should be there. If not, put your time into places they are, whether that's focusing on getting rankings in Google for words being searched or serving content/ads to your audience.

For most companies, it's a "watch this space" brief for the time being. In my opinion, unless you are absolutely smashing it on the other networks, leave this for now and focus on getting the fundamentals right in your digital strategy before getting too distracted with this.

Is there anything we should do right now on Threads?

Once piece of advice I'd offer is to consider signing up with accounts to try and protect the usernames / handles which mirror your other social media networks just for consistency. It's not the end of the world and right now there is still talk about how these will be displayed and made available but if you have the time and inclination, that's probably worth considering.

I hope that's helpful / reassuring for the time being. Whilst some brands will make it work and ride the initial wave of enthusiasm, I'll be interested to see who is still talking about this in a month's time and who indeed has switched across from Twitter.

Chris