Elon Musk’s Twitter May Be Well and Truly Zucked | PRO Insight

The Fourth of July preceded a media-tech battle royale that’s rapidly turning ugly: Elon Musk’s Twitter vs. Mark Zuckerberg’s new Threads. It’s hard to know who to cheer for among these once-admired, now widely reviled moguls. But perhaps it becomes a bit clearer when Musk calls Zuckerberg a “cuck” and proposes measuring each other’s phalluses, as he did this past weekend. Methinks the world’s richest man doth protest too much.

It also gets easier after this holiday week to compare Zuckerberg and his engineers to George Washington’s soldiers steeling themselves as they crossed the Delaware River to attack a Hessian garrison. That victory seemed small at first, but it rapidly snowballed into something bigger. That certainly is happening with Threads, which hit 100 million users yesterday, less than a week after its launch.

Threads is essentially a (pleasantly Musk-free) form of Twitter. It’s virtually identical, but without Twitter’s baggage and bad aftertaste.

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So what does this mean for the creative community and the world of media and entertainment? Virtually all creators and other players in the entertainment and media ecosystem have used Twitter for years to build audiences, tell stories and promote their wares. But that has been difficult for many of us due to toxic messages peddled by an angry populace and, since October, an increasingly erratic and confounding owner.

I too have toyed with leaving Twitter several times, but never quite pulled the plug. Call it habit. Call it dependence. Now Zuckerberg, no angel in the eyes of many due to Facebook’s and Instagram’s well-documented social harms, has come to break our routine.

Threads promises a kinder, gentler form of Twitter. That seems to be its fundamental selling point, and that may be enough for many in the creative community to at least try — and maybe later to buy – since Zuckerberg will surely be selling ads on it. After all, Meta made it so easy to join. For all Instagram users, which means virtually all artists, just flip the switch and you’re on. And once you’re on, you’re hooked.

Literally. It’s like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave! If you do try, no Instagram for you — the accounts are so closely linked that you can’t close a Threads account without quitting Instagram and jettisoning all of those followers that you worked so hard to build.

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Diabolical! But would you expect anything else from the mind of Zuck?

And that’s the point. Meta brings a massive weapon into the Twitter battle that previous combatants like Mastodon — well-named, since it seems likely to be extinct soon — or the Donald’s Truth Social would die for. Its two billion-plus Instagram users, and their follower connections, are an advantage no one else can duplicate.

It’s certainly no mystery, then, that purported libertarian Musk cried foul and threatened intervention by the courts. He has sicced his team of high-priced lawyers against Threads. But unless Twitter can demonstrate that key members on the Threads team stole company trade secrets — Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said no one on the Threads engineering team even worked at Twitter — Musk’s transparently desperate legal battle will go out with a whisper-like tweet. Twitter’s basic functionality is just too obvious to claim as some kind of secret.

Zuckerberg’s Alfred E. Neuman “What, me worry?” stance — “Concerning!” — is backed up by the fact that Meta’s “theft in plain sight” strategy has worked time and time again. Remember the genesis of Instagram Stories , a clone of Snapchat’s successful disappearing videos?

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Instagram’s then-CEO Kevin Systrom famously answered “Absolutely!” when asked whether he had copied Snapchat. “They deserve all the credit,” he openly and unapologetically conceded at the time. Meta’s most recent example of imitation as the sincerest form of flattery, prior to Threads, is TikTok wannabe Reels, which reportedly is doing rather well, thank you.

Meanwhile, Twitter reportedly has lost an estimated two-thirds of its value since Musk paid $44 billion to take it over. Advertisers have left in droves. Ad revenues are expected to drop 28% this year, and some in the entertainment community are beginning to flee the nest as well. Hate speech and conspiracy theories are not exactly where it’s at.

Seeking any avenue of growth, Musk will undoubtedly double down on extremism, courting the crazies in the hopes of some kind of relevance in a world no longer enamored by his Tony Stark impression. Evolution complete: the Iron Man has become the Egg Man – thin-skinned and shattered by his own words.

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So while Zuck may not be the greatest alternative, at least Threads promises content moderation to keep things civil. This at least gives hope to the creative and entertainment community — not to mention the advertisers that support it — for a new social media world order that focuses on the art itself, rather than ugly commentary that frequently attacks it.

Too bad it took the social empire-building Mark Zuckerberg to be the one to do it. It’s not exactly out of a sense of post-Fourth of July patriotism. So either take seriously the new adage “Threader beware!” — or just put your phone down and go outside to hear some real tweets.

For those of you interested in learning more, visit Peter’s firm Creative Media at creativemedia.biz and follow him on Twitter or Threads @pcsathy.

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