By now you probably know that Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, has launched their potential “Twitter Killer” app called Threads. A number of Twitter wannabes have appeared over recent times but Mastadon, Blue Sky, Gettr and Truth Social haven’t really risen to anything of note. Threads however is different in that it links to your Instagram account, your followers and following, thereby creating a social network with some clout from the off. Whether Zuckerberg and co can build on that remains to be seen, but on day one of Threads there were a few competitions running. In addition with there being an obvious link between Insta and Facebook entry options required by brands could easily include posting and/or sharing on Threads. But is Threads going to be the next new place for comping or will Twitter hold it’s ground? We decided to take a closer look.
How To Join Threads
Signing up for Threads is actually really easy. You need to download the app for either Apple or Android and then login using your Instagram account credentials. Be warned you can’t decide to delete your Threads account independently of your Instagram account. This may well change in the future (and we think it should) but it’s something to be aware of at the beginning. There are options to make your Threads account private and put it on hiatus and these are the best options if you discover Threads isn’t for you. When you join Threads you’ll be asked if you wish to follow the same accounts that you follow on Instagram. This makes life easier in some respects as it saves finding them for yourself. Now you’d think that if you’re following some accounts then their posts will appear in your newsfeed. No! For some reason Threads is full of things you’re not following and this does make it a little more annoying. The feed itself is very familiar to anyone who uses Twitter as it’s full of snippets of wisdom, photos, and things like “what the heck am I supposed to do on Threads”. You can like, share and reply to posts just like you can on other networks. We like the fact that Threads appears very clean and easy to read and most certainly it shows some promise. But there’s a big “but” if you’re a comper!
Finding Competitions On Threads
In comping terms Threads starts to unravel (see what we did there). Meta really must hate people searching for content because their search facilities on Instagram and Facebook are poor. Threads is even worse in that you can’t search for hashtags or content as you can on Twitter. In fact search at the moment is only good for finding accounts of other Threads users. Now we did stumble across some prize draws posted on Threads on day of launch. Swan Brand, PLT and On The Beach were amongst those that we spotted but that was only via scrolling through the newsfeed. If you’re following eagle-eyed compers then that’s actually your best bet for finding prize draws at the moment. Another issue with Threads is that it’s a mobile app. Not a big problem unless like us you prefer using a desktop for seeking out prize draws and giveaways. Threads accounts can be viewed on desktop but you can’t post or use it that way. We can copy links and therefore share them with Loquax users which is fine but not always easy on mobile. The mobile app is decent enough and you can transit between Threads and Instagram (and you can do so on desktop too) but we found you couldn’t easily switch from one Threads account to another. So whilst we could login to ‘LoquaxUK’ on Threads, in order to then go to a personal account we had to logout. On Instagram it’s a lot smoother and less hassle.
Is It Worth Checking Out?
Personally and Loquax Competitions wise we think it’s far too early days for us to spend too much time on Threads. It looks good and has the potential to be better than Twitter but functionality just isn’t there. From a finding competitions perspective we just don’t have the time to scroll down our mobile feed in the hope of spotting a giveaway. Threads will need to improve search and filters first (and whilst they’re at it do the same for Instagram). The lack of desktop version is the biggest issue as sorry but we prefer to do our updating on the big screen. Finally and this is a personal thing, as much of a cesspool Twitter has become (well done Elon) it’s still Twitter and it’s hard to walk away from. It’s going to take a lot of time to consider Threads as an alternative to Twitter or additional social network. There’s also the argument of do we actually even need more online distractions. Anyway from a comping view point you might want to jump in. It’s new and potentially untapped comping territory. Whilst it’s ungainly if you can find elusive low entry options then it might be worth investing some time. Whether brands will exclusively run giveaways on Threads remains to be seen. We still think most will just have it as an additional way to enter a particular prize draw. Overall Threads may well become a viable alternative to Twitter. Our hope is that it kickstarts Twitter to be better because we don’t need four social networks and we don’t need three owned by the same company, especially one that’s keen on mining every bit of data out it’s users that it can.