Will Threads have "culturally dethroned" Twitter as the de facto online public square at end of 2024?
26
161
470
2025
2%
chance

Twitter has always punched above its weight, having an outsized cultural influence and role compared to its number of active users.

When journalists quote social media, they do so by embedding tweets far more than Facebook posts.

Twitter currently sits on the throne of being the de-facto online public square.

Even if more conversations are happening elsewhere, conversations on Twitter are treated as more salient, more public, more notable for inclusion in news articles about what people are discussing on social media.

It is the primary social network used by journalists, politicians, and influential people generally.

If you are a business with only one social media account, it's probably Twitter.

This market resolves YES on my subjective judgement that, at the end of 2024, Meta Threads has largely displaced Twitter in this special spot at the top of the hierarchy of social media platforms.

It will resolve NO if Twitter largely still maintains its current status in this regard, and N/A if it is too close to call.

I will be leaning heavily on the concept of twitter being the "de facto online public square", all other facts about it, like who uses it, whether journalists embed tweets in news articles, are primarily evidence toward or against it having this role.

This market will close at the end of 2024 and I will outline my opinion on whether this has happened, leaving opportunity for people to convince me of their views before resolving, to increase the chances of a fair resolution. External evidence should play into resolution such that it does not depend solely on my opinion - for example, opinion pieces or news articles by reputable people discussing "the decline in Twitter's influence" or "Threads' failure to catch on among elites" or so forth, will be good evidence either way.

As resolution may require significant judgement on my part, I will not bet on this market. Though for full disclosure if I were to bet, at time of writing it would be on NO.

I may resolve early if it is abundantly clear that Threads has dethroned Twitter earlier.

My aim in resolving "at" end of 2024 rather than "before" end of 2024 is to avoid having to draw a line during what might be a slow transition. So the spirit of this market, is a dethroning "before" end of 2024, but the letter is "at". The latter is in the service of the former, and I will resolve in line with the spirit of the market rather than the letter, if there is a conflict.

Within reason, and in response to good suggestions from commenters, I may adopt more specific resolution criteria that reduce the level of judgement required. But these will be a guide only, and will not cause the market to resolve counterintuitively if it turns out there is a conflict between the spirit and letter of the resolution criteria.

Edit July 2023: for the purposes of this market, any rebranding of or clear successor to Twitter counts as Twitter. Good rule of thumb: does your Twitter login work still? If yes, it's still Twitter.

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sold Ṁ10 of YES

The fact that googling "threads" gets you to a bunch of articles about threads but not to the actual website makes me pretty negative. Even if Twitter collapses, threads won't take over if it's not easily linkable.

@ShakedKoplewitz I think it doesn't even have a website, and that it's mobile-only for now.

predicts NO

There is one way to access it through browser. If you know the username you can type: https://www.threads.net/@
after the @ type in the username. you can try https://www.threads.net/@nfl to test. It will only be able to go to that page though, cant really browse beyond it.

@chrisjbillington I stand by this being a bad sign for it. If it doesn't even have a website it's very awkward to link or refer when doing anything on PC.

@ShakedKoplewitz Wasn't disagreeing, but I wouldn't be so sure. My intuition agrees with you, but is frequently a poor indicator on the subject - I am constantly surprised how much people are happy to do things on their phones instead of normal computers.

My expectation is that threads won't dethrone twitter regardless, though.

@chrisjbillington I agree for general usage numbers, but I think it's a more significant barrier to becoming a "town square" - the best thing twitter has going for that status is high accessibility and legibility, and only having a mobile app sacrifices that. E.g. you can't randomly post a thread in a blog post you're writing on PC.

@ShakedKoplewitz Ah yes that's a good point, agreed.

bought Ṁ30 of NO

Thanks for a good market description ✨

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