battle of the titans
august 2023
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to watch two geeks battle it out for supremacy?
Well, now you can… Late last year, ChatGPT broke all records to become the fastest-growing application, hitting 100 million users in less than two months.
Pretty impressive? You might think… Surely no one can beat that? But they have…
Back in April 2023, Elon Musk staged what they’re calling a “hostile takeover” of seasoned social media platform, Twitter. Unhappy with his somewhat controversial views and policies, some advertisers abandoned ship and fled to other networks. It was this shakeup in the social world that prompted the idea for a new platform.
Now, before you get too excited, this isn’t a great underdog story where some unknown coder in his bedroom beats Goliath and becomes the new social media king. No. The “someone” was none other than Mark Zuckerberg, eg Mr Meta (or Mr Facebook for those oldies in the room). This new platform, Threads, was supposed to be a text-based platform, designed to rival Twitter and take advantage of the discord currently on the social scene. And it was a huge success! For about all of two weeks…
After smashing the ChatGPT record and gaining 100 million users in less than a week, Threads’ active user base plummeted, leaving them with just 13 million engaged users by the end of July. In the meantime, our buddy Musk has “reinvented” Twitter, rebranding it as X, and he apparently has big plans for the platform.
Meta now has new plans to help turn Threads around… And it goes on and on… I expect this battle of the Titans will continue for many months (or years to come) – it may even come to blows if Zuckerberg’s calls for Musk to meet him in a cage fight become a reality. Now, I’m a footie man as you know but this is one fight I might like to watch…
The question is, how many social media platforms are too many? We started out with AOL Instant Messenger (yes, for the dinosaurs among us) followed by MySpace, Facebook, Snapchat… and many more that I can’t possibly list.
As you already know, I’m not a huge social media fan. You won’t find me on Facebook or Instagram, but I do like to have a gander at Tik Tok from time to time.. I’m old-school. LinkedIn is my only network.
But how about you? Do you have all the platforms? Were you one of the Threads 100 million? Are you still using it today? And does it bring you a good return on your time investment? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
And if you do want to connect with me on social, head over to my LinkedIn page. If you like these weekly emails, you’ll love my LinkedIn posts…
See you there