As Twitter crumbles, with gradual losses of free features since Elon Musk bought the social network in October, new competitors are vying for dominance in the field of short text platforms. The most recent challenger is Threads, from Instagram, launched this Wednesday (5).
BlueSky, developed with funding from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, also competes for this market, despite restricting access to the general public. Mastodon, in turn, has an interface similar to the blue bird network and is the first open network to break the threshold of the first million users.
A Sheet compared the four social networks and none of them delivers the complete and accessible experience guaranteed by Twitter on its best days.
Before Musk’s purchase, the platform had a solid base of 239 million active users, with useful features such as trending topics and Tweetdeck, which allowed you to view multiple timelines at once.
Instagram opened Threads to the public as a minimum viable product. Users can publish texts, videos, photos and interact with other people’s publications. Many of the platform’s features, such as interoperability with other networks, are still promises.
Using Mastodon involves choosing servers and navigating between them, which can make using them labyrinthine. Although the social network has a main server, the person can choose a niche to access and publish content, according to language, domain subject and other divisions.
These last two platforms are part of an open system called Activity Pub. It’s a federation of social networks, says Ronaldo Lemos, chief scientist at the Technology and Society Institute in Rio de Janeiro and columnist for Sheet. Mastodon and Threads users will be able to interact with each other and exchange messages, in the future, according to the Meta.
BlueSky more closely emulates the old Twitter experience. Access restriction, however, works like a double-edged sword: users feel more comfortable publishing more intimate content, but cannot find the diversity of interlocutors available in consolidated networks.
BlueSky is also open, but it is in another social network neighborhood, called AT Protocol, and therefore does not have communication with Threads and Mastodon.
NUMBER OF USERS
Threads reached 70 million users 40 hours after its launch, in an unprecedented number of users, according to a publication by Mark Zuckerberg on the network itself. Twitter, for example, took two years to get its first million users.
Meta took advantage of Instagram’s more than 2 billion user base to power its new service. It is possible to access Threads with the same account registered in the photo social network. Influencers, entertainment pages and press vehicles are already on the network.
Twitter, by comparison, had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, when the company released its latest balance sheet. Since the purchase by Musk, the company has left the Stock Exchange and no longer discloses this information. Consultants estimate that today the social network gathers 300 million users.
Mastodon has been online since 2017 and has 13 million users. That number skyrocketed from November 2022 until now, when the platform had just over 1 million active people. Among users, there are fewer influential personalities and institutions —this Sheetfor example, is not active on the network.
On BlueSky there are some famous tweeters such as the political profile Tesoureiros and the journalist Reinaldo Azevedo. The social network, however, has about 50,000 people registered and requires an invitation from a community member to give access to interested parties.
WHAT CAN BE PUBLISHED
All four social networks allow you to publish short texts and images. Only BlueSky does not support video.
The character limit is 500 per post for Threads and Mastodon, 300 for Bluesky, and 280 for Twitter.
Free Twitter accounts can post videos up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds; Subscribers to the Plus package, which costs R$42 a month, can upload materials of up to two hours.
Threads limits videos to five minutes. On Mastodon, the limit is 40 gigabytes per file.
TIMELINE
Twitter features two versions of the timeline. A chronological one, with publications only from whom the person follows. The other uses artificial intelligence to weigh a number of factors and deliver posts that generate more engagement. The social network opened the operation of this algorithm to the public in April.
Threads only shows posts from who the person follows on the timeline. Meta has not yet explained how it filters and sorts the publications available on the timeline. In the first days of operation, the publications feed also took a while to load.
Mastodon shows the user publications of accounts and hashtags followed and the posts with which they interact. The order is chronological. It also gives the option to access livefeeds, which show all posts made on the server hosting the account or on all servers.
BlueSky gives you the option to view different timelines. “I’m following” shows posts from accounts added by the user. The “what’s hot” features posts selected by BlueSky’s algorithm. There are also science, politics, fashion and entertainment themed feeds.
FEATURES LIKE SEARCH, LIST AND TWEETDECK
Threads went live without known Twitter features such as searching for posts, which has filters to optimize results, lists that allow you to gather like-minded profiles to add publications of interest or even the option to save posts to view later. Bluesky also lacks these features.
More time on the air, Mastodon brings together all these popular options on Twitter.
None of the social networks, however, have an auxiliary platform like Tweetdeck that allowed viewing several timelines simultaneously.
MODERATION
Instagram confirmed on Wednesday that Threads will adopt the same community standards as the photo social network. As a result, it is forbidden to publish nude images, for example, with the exception of specific situations such as breastfeeding scenes. Images understood by the network moderator as inciting illegal activities are also prohibited.
Twitter has more lenient rules and allows, for example, the publication of pornography. Elon Musk bought the social network with the promise of more freedom of expression on the platform, after extremist politicians and activists were banned by the moderation team. Today, the platform prohibits violent speech or that promotes sexual exploitation of minors, harassment, suicide and illegal activities.
Moderation rules vary from server to server on Mastodon.
For Ronaldo Lemos, Threads will be able to use the interoperability with Mastodon to continue with the audience of those who do not agree with Meta’s moderation rules. Anyone who finds them too strict, for example, will be able to create an account on an arm without Mastodon rules and have access to friends’ accounts and publications of interest on Threads.
BlueSky asks its users not to violate laws and not to disrespect other users. The social network prohibits extremist conduct based on race, gender, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation. The rules apply only to the Bluesky server, not to other social networks hosted on the AT protocol.
PRIVACY
Threads asks for access to personal information, financial information, health and fitness data, and messages in other apps. These requests are not repeated on competing platforms.
Threads is designed to import data from Instagram, which includes behavioral and advertising consumption information.
Mastodon does not collect personal data. Bluesky imports only contact and navigation information on the platform itself.
Twitter also collects purchase and location data and uses information to deliver advertisements.
Mark Zuckerberg said that Threads will start discussing how to sell advertising only after the network reaches its first billion users.
