TODAY spoke with experts on the likely impact of Threads, its potential to take off globally and in Singapore, and whether users should be concerned about Meta’s growing power as it adds another social media platform to its stable.Threads is the latest platform in social media giant Meta's repertoire, which already includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.per post, compared with 280 for Twitter, and can add pictures or videos of up to five minutes in length.
Dr Andrew Yee, an assistant professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design , said that for a social media platform to be successful, it must generate a “critical mass of active users” before it is of use to netizens.“Platforms that have more users are able to more likely meet the needs , because there is generally more content and other people to communicate with and meet those needs,” said Dr Yee.
“In that sense, it seems like they have been very successful in very quickly reaching the critical mass,” said Dr Sng. He also added that since Twitter was seemingly less popular in Singapore compared to countries such as the United States, his “hunch” is that Threads might also be less likely to take off as it serves a similar function.
Dr Sng added that while different companies typically possessed data on different aspects of users’ lives, Meta – which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and now Threads – would have collected data about the same person, from different sources.