The Zuck

twitter, threads, and the wonders of social media

We lived on farms, and then we lived in cities, and now we are going to live on the internet. - The Social Network

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, king of social media, congress regular, and taekwondo enthusiast, has made quite the comeback. The Facebook to Meta transition was a bit of a flop, the Metaverse was not it (at least for now), and his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience did not have the impact he expected. Months later, he appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast, where he seemed a bit chipper. They talked about a range of topics, spending some time on the rumored Twitter clone they had going on. He hinted that he did not like the way Elon was running things and that Twitter had essentially failed at its mission, hence leaving the door open for something new. Whether we like it or not, The Zuck has become a thorn in the side of all of us. You can hate him, you can love him, but you can’t deny him — let’s jump in.

Quick Recap

Elon Musk, after months of will he or will he not drama, purchased Twitter on October 27, 2022, for $44 billion. Upon acquisition, he started to clean house, firing several top executives, including the CEO, Parag Agrawal. He then proceeded to add a paywall called Twitter Blue, ban accounts that linked to rival platforms, laid off more than 6,000 employees, and recently hired a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino.

While chaotic, the site kept chugging along. But then came the rate limits:

He played himself with this one

That was July 1st. A minor inconvenience for Musk became a major opportunity for the Zuck, and 5 days later, Threads was launched:

Which PR intern pitched this?

Threads

On Monday, Threads surpassed 100M users (in 5 days), beating ChatGPT to the milestone. The users are also very active, with more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app as reported by The Verge. For context, Twitter is estimated to have about 450 million monthly active users. They’ve been around since 2006.

Now, I’ve already heard the argument, the only reason Threads has been able to grow this fast is been because of its connection to Instagram. Instagram has over a billion users, and prompting all those users of a new app that seamlessly incorporates your Instagram account, even exporting over the same follower list, will, consequently, lead to quick and easy growth. But we must give credit where credit is due. The app was reportedly not even ready to be launched when it was. And yet here we are, in a new era of Twitter and all its copies: Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, Substack Notes (hi), Truth Social, etc.

As an Instagram app, Threads abides by Instagram’s moderation policies, which means it’ll be much more tamed compared to Twitter. This is where things get interesting because, if the different platforms have different rules, the content will be much more diverse. Will the shit posting continue on Threads? Will more professional news sites leave Twitter for Threads?

Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, says that Threads is “not going to do anything to encourage” politics and “hard news,”

The back and forth between Zuckerburg and Musk has been entertaining to watch unfold, to say the least. There’s apparently a cage fight planned, Zuck is training taekwondo, and Musk is calling him names.

The Zuck

When we think of Tech CEOs, we generally have an idea of how they each uniquely operate. Elon Musk is relentless, Tim Cook is resolute, Sundar Pichai is insightful, Satya Nadella is transformative, and Mark Zuckerberg is, well… he’s that guy.

The Zuck has come a long way since The Social Network days. Yes, the movie is mostly fiction, but this is the guy that really did have a business card that said I’m CEO, bitch. Taking a look at his career since the inception of The Facebook, he truly operated by the commonly used tech mantra, move fast and break things:

1. 2004: Creation of Facebook: Zuck, along with his college roommates, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin (rip), Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes, launched Facebook from their Harvard University dorm room.

2. 2006: Opening Facebook to the public: Facebook was made available to anyone aged 13 and older (yikes?) with a valid email address, expanding its user base beyond college campuses.

3. 2007: The Beacon controversy: Zuck introduced the Facebook Platform, opening up the backend to developers to create applications. His first major run-in with the silly little issue of privacy, Beacon raised concerns for automatically sharing users' actions without explicit consent. It eventually led to a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, which was settled in 2009. Strike 1.

4. 2012: Acquisition of Instagram: $1 billion.

5. 2014: Acquisition of WhatsApp: $19 billion.

6. 2016: Facebook Live and Oculus acquisition: Facebook launched their beloved live stream. Also another $2 billion.

7. 2018: Cambridge Analytica scandal: Facebook faced a major privacy scandal involving the unauthorized access and misuse of user data by Cambridge Analytica. The data was then shopped around for a reported $15.4 million from most notably the Trump 2016 campaign. This ultimately led to Zuck standing before Congress and a whopping $5 billion fine from the FTC. Strike 2.

8. 2020: Libra (now Diem): Facebook announced its plans to create a global digital currency called Libra, which later underwent rebranding and became Diem due to regulatory challenges, and now it’s just… there?

9. 2021: Meta: Facebook becomes Meta, the Zuck enters the metaverse, and the future of VR is here; but not really. Apparently, the metaverse is kinda dead, at least for now.

10. 2023: LLaMa: Zuck cannot miss out on the AI hype. In February, Meta announced LLaMA, a foundational, 65-billion-parameter large language model. Zuck even went on to say that Meta’s "single largest investment is advancing AI and building it into every one of our products.”

11. 2023: Threads: see above.

For a more personal history, I recommend listening to Kara Swisher’s remarks on her dealings with Zuckerberg throughout her career:

The Zuck has had a hand in everything. There was even once a phone, Facebook paper, slingshot messaging, and so on. Many failures, and yet Meta is the third most valuable US tech company, with a market cap of about $480B.

It’s worth noting that Zuck has this thing called supervoting shares, which is a special class of stock that essentially gives him majority voting power. As of December 2022, his ownership accounted for 13.4% but his voting power was 61.9%, hence ultimate power of a publicly held company (capitalism?). I note this because while he does indeed move fast and break things, it’s not like the market can push him out (at least not easily). Plenty have used this argument to say that Zuck’s leadership, while resourceful, is reckless. Some have even gone as far as to say that he is dangerous.

What is it all for?

This leads to a more existential question on the nature of social media itself. We’ve lived with Facebook and the rest of the squad for nearly 20 years now, and to say the world will never be the same is an understatement. Nearly 5 billion people use some form of social media today. Suicide rates among teenage girls have greatly increased. A tweet led to the rescue of 10,000 Starving Workers In Saudi. Mass shootings have been live-streamed. They kept us connected during the pandemic.

There’s an endless list that goes back and forth between all the positives and all the negatives social media has had on the public. It’s a battle for attention, but also a means for connection. To say it’s all Facebook’s fault and that Zuckerberg is dangerous is lazy. We all know there’s more to it. I liken social media to cigarettes — once a staple of the American lifestyle, now only known for giving you cancer, and yet, people smoke. Governments around the globe continue to beef up their regulatory scrutiny of social media, that’s why Threads is currently not available in Europe. But as we’ve seen with AI, artificially blocking progress and growth doesn’t always work to slow things down, and as long as there’s wifi and a yearning for community, people will still use it.

Thank you

1997, the year I was born, is considered the start of Gen-Z. I still vaguely remember a time without social media, but I honestly could not tell you how that felt. I made a Facebook account in middle school, and an Instagram and Twitter in high school. I’d had my first cigarette and now I’m chronically online - like everyone else. We still don’t have enough data to see the true impact of growing up with social media, but we do know that we can’t get enough of it. I’d be writing to the void without it. So for what it’s worth, I’d like to thank Zuck for unlocking the floodgates so that I can share this post with you today. As always, if you have any questions, want more explanations, or strongly disagree, comment below, follow me on Twitter, follow me on Threads, or shoot me an email.