Five reasons Threads could still go the distance
by Casey Newton from The Verge - All Posts on (#6D2PC)
Illustration: The Verge This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer. Sign up here.
I.
On July 5th, Meta released Threads into the world. Its arrival came after months of anticipation, but ultimately a bit earlier than Meta had planned. Elon Musk's characteristically self-defeating move to limit free users to viewing a small number of tweets each day had given Meta an unusually opportune moment to strike, and it seized the moment.
The outsized success that followed - Threads was the fastest app to hit 100 million downloads, and later blew past 150 million - came as a surprise to almost everyone involved. That includes the app's makers at Meta, who hadn't built a homegrown hit this big...