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

July 13, 2023

HBR Staff/Jasmin Merdan/MirageC/Getty Images

Summary.

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.

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

Summary.

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