Meta Takes On Twitter
Who Will Emerge Victorious In The Realms Of Social Media?
B. N. Dent
IN MAY 1997, ANDREW WEINREICH LAUNCHED a website called ‘SixDegrees.com’. Whilst this may not ring any bells or resonate with any form of significance to many of you, this event played a pivotal role in shaping the development and fierce competition among contemporary social media platforms. SixDegrees.com is widely considered as the first ever digital social networking platform, integrating presently pertinent functionalities such as profiles and friends lists. However, due to the nascent nature of the internet, the site was ahead of its time. Consequently, the user base stagnated, and the site was shut down.
Nevertheless, in today’s day and age, where more people have access to the internet than to adequate sanitation services, the time for social media platforms is just right. Of the 5.18 billion people who have access to the internet, 4.8 billion were reported as being social media users. As with the popularisation of other assets in society, social media has become increasingly commercialised, thus greatly increasing its value and the desire for corporations to be at the forefront of this virtual domain. What was once viewed as a place to simply connect with close friends and family online, social media has now transformed into a setting where individuals can earn a livelihood, propagate political agendas, receive global news, and much more.
The most prevalent rivalry within the highly contested landscape of social media as of late has been between Twitter and Meta Platforms (owners of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp). Twitter, in and of itself, has experienced an extreme amount of change over the last year, having been bought by Elon Musk, experiencing the firing of 6,000 employees and, as of last week, seeing a crane scrape down the iconic blue bird logo at Twitter HQ in light of the platform being rebranded as ‘X’.
Alongside the disorderly state of Twitter’s internal operations, it is facing further threats from Meta Platforms, which recently launched social media platform ‘Threads’. The main functionality of the new platform is very similar to that of Twitter, serving as a place to share text updates and join public conversations. However, these two events are not coincidental; the infamous CEO of Meta Platforms, Mark Zuckerberg or ‘Zuck’, saw the launch of Threads as an opportunity to capitalise on the recent public dissatisfaction with Twitter and its internal struggles. Over the initial weekend of the launch of Threads in July this year, the platform reported a record-breaking 100 million sign-ups. Musk, of course, was not pleased with the meteoric rise of the platform as it posed a direct threat to his own. Accordingly, Musk responded in a topical fashion with some defensive tweets. One notably stating: “Threads is just Instagram minus pics, which makes no sense, given that thirst pics are the main reason people use that app. How many times have you read comments on Insta pics and wished there were more? Personally, never.” From here, the feud between the two ego-centric billionaires escalated, but not in the formal manner of intellectual debate and logical arguments. Instead, the online tussle took a more barbaric turn, with Musk inciting the idea of himself and Zuckerberg engaging in a “cage match”, to which Zuckerberg obviously accepted.
Alongside the entertainment that this squabble provided to the media, it is also gratifying to see that we have not strayed from the ways of our historical past where two individuals are not afraid to settle their differences through violence. Societally, maybe we’re not advancing as fast as we think. To refocus on the main theme of the article, it is looking like Twitter will remain atop its throne for the near future as Zuckerberg recently admitted that more than half of Thread’s initial users stopped using the platform since its mid-June launch. Holistically, whilst the constant battle between corporations for innovation within social media may seem perpetual, recent research shows that user demand is on the decline. This trend is most directly correlated with the recently-intensified need to simultaneously satisfy users, investors, and advertisers, which is pushing platforms to prioritise monetisation over user experience. This has thus detracted from the foundational ideology behind creating social media, which was to serve as a place for people to interact with one another when they were not in the physical proximity to do so.
“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
– Albert Einstein