Threads Foreshadows a Big — and Surprising — Shift in Social Media

Being able to instantly port over your Instagram followers — and the accounts you follow — hints at the promise of open-protocol platforms.

by

Scott Duke Kominers

and

Liang Wu

by

Scott Duke Kominers

and

Liang Wu

July 13, 2023

HBR Staff/Jasmin Merdan/MirageC/Getty Images

Summary.

Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, has become the fastest downloaded app in history. One of the reasons for this is because it allows users to port over their profiles and follows from the already popular social media platform Instagram, also owned by Meta — a feature that may soon extend to open social media protocol Activity Hub. In doing so, Threads suggests that an alternative approach to social media, in which user data is portable, interoperable, and not controlled by the platform, may be going mainstream.

On July 5, Facebook parent company Meta released Threads, a Twitter competitor that drew 70 million users in its first few days, dramatically outpacing other would-be Twitter replacements and becoming the fastest-growing app in history.

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Scott Duke Kominers (@skominers) is a Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School; a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Department of Economics; and Co-Principal Investigator of the Harvard Crypto, Fintech and Web3 Lab. He is also an a16z crypto Research Partner, and advises a number of companies on marketplace and incentive design. Previously, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and the inaugural Saieh Family Fellow in Economics at the Becker Friedman Institute. His first book is The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create.
Liang Wu (@whattheljw) is the Head of Community and Growth at the Harvard Crypto, Fintech and Web3 Lab, and a Research Fellow at Harvard Business School. He is also an investor and advisor to Web3 projects and companies. Previously, he worked in Strategy and BizOps across Web3 and Enterprise SAAS companies where he built teams and communities and led growth initiatives. He writes a newsletter about emerging technology (especially AI and Web3) at lifeincolor.substack.com.

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Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning’s online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Digital Intelligence . Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

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Threads Foreshadows a Big — and Surprising — Shift in Social Media

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