Beyond Social

Meta Threads: A Glimpse Into the Future (Straight from the Source)

• Vista Social • Season 1 • Episode 27

Share episode

Threads might just be the “unfiltered” future social media has been waiting for…

In this episode of Beyond Social, hosts Reggie Azevedo and Vitaly Veksler, unpack everything they learned from an exclusive in-person Meta event on the topic of Threads. From raw, behind-the-scenes content that outshines polished campaigns to Threads’ role in the decentralized Fediverse, this episode explores why brands and agencies should pay attention to Meta’s bold new direction.

Vitaly shares insights on Threads’ rapid growth, unique appeal, and why it’s not just another social network, but a platform built for connection, authenticity, and innovation. They also discuss how brands can leverage this unfiltered space to resonate with audiences and adapt to shifting trends.

Tune in to discover why Threads isn’t just about content, it’s about building real connections in a world tired of being marketed to.

Happy listening!



We are so tired of being marketed to all the time. We want a platform that is just more about the reality of life and the real things behind, you know, just, just that sort of difference. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Beyond Social podcast. My name is Reggie, and this is the show where we go behind the scenes on how marketers are building amazing things on social and how we're developing tools to support them. I've got Vitaly here, our Head of Product, and recently him and some of our marketing team members were able to go to a Meta event where they were specifically talking about Threads, the future of Threads, everything kind of going on around Threads. So I'm excited, I'm very curious by nature, you know that, so I definitely want to pick your brain on how that was, some of the outcomes around that. I love meeting, network teams, whether it's Facebook or TikTok or LinkedIn, to me they are sort of at the forefront of our lives, effectively, right? So everything, our entire existence today is intertwined or even sort of channeled through things that they're building. Yeah. Right. So it's almost like, I don't know, thinking of them as, as, as the, as the internet or as air that we breathe, or I don't know, they're, they're so fundamental, right. You kind of go in and meet with them. It's almost like, I don't know, seeing the other side or something, or like, um, seeing how, I don't know, the food is made, or seeing how the water is formed, or something like it, it's so fun, it's so fundamental. Um, but yeah, there are, the location is fantastic, we met at a, at the Penn Station, which is like a historic building, and just everything about the environment is just like fantastical. I mean, you think offices, you think offices, right? And the office is like notwithstanding, the palm trees and the bike lanes and people just freely roaming and just like being themselves and just looking all unique. I mean, it's just a fantastical place, Meta office. Uh, uh, but they invited us along with several other, sort of tool makers, to talk about Threads and to talk about how they kind of view the future of Threads, um, as a Social Network to see if we need help to get our users and our users and marketers and marketers help brands and whether they are all understand to sort of find ways for us to explain to our users in order to build tools for users that help them take advantage of what Threads offers. And, and that sort of was the premise of the, of, of the meeting. To talk about, okay, so here we have Facebook, you have Instagram, and now we have Threads, right? So what does each platform offer and why Threads is so unique and, you know, what the future of the Threads is like? Yeah, so I mean, I know we're going to get deeper into this, but when you talk about Facebook and Instagram, now Threads, a question that we come across a lot from our customer base is generally, we see this on social, should I be on Threads? I'm a brand and I'm asking this, like what, I mean, I'm sure you've got your personal opinion on this too, I want to hear, and then also, what was, I guess, the ethos for Threads in their perspective? Yeah, so, to me, and purely my opinion, I just want to also kind of put a disclaimer out there that I'm here sharing sort of my perspective, and not in any way, shape, or form, like an official stance that Facebook has or anything like that on this whole Meta. So, the perception that I had is that, once upon a time, there was Facebook. And then, because the world is simple and slow and there was no other awesome Social Network out there, right? So we got that out of the way, a great Social Network for social things. And then things became faster, more visual, internet became faster, you know, people wanted to see more videos and you know, more phones in their hands and Instagram came about and that was like the next evolution of the way we consume content. And now that the world is, had all of that, right? Um, they are looking to consume content that is very, uh, sort of genuine in nature. Mmm. So think of say our podcast here, right? So our podcast here, we've got a studio. We've got an amazing team, lighting. It's a highly, very well produced, high quality content that's gonna get published to our probably YouTube short, YouTube and podcast networks. And parts of it will probably make it to, to Instagram as well, and that is what people kind of expect to find on these networks. But let's say for example, we wanted to also share some behind the scenes stuff on how we actually record this, how we took an Uber this morning, right? And how we couldn't find the door into the studio or how you were trying to figure out the right color of your shirt, you know, uh, or trying to get that screen going, right. So, so that kind of content right is interestingly enough, is, not only also interesting to your sort of followers or just broad audience, right? But in many cases, it's a lot more valuable because it's so raw, right? It's so honest and it's so sort of down to earth. My takeaway is that Threads is not only about more sort of honest content, or when I say honest, all I really mean is more raw. Like, you know, you have sort of a highly produced content, oftentimes heavily injected with, uh, marketing, right? Nothing but just glorified ads in a lot of cases, right? And then you have the actual true life content, right? Along with all sorts of community building and experience. Say, for example, you wanted to get together and watch, you know, a football game together or something, right? And that's where you would do it effectively. You're not going to do it on Instagram, but you would do it on Threads. So, basically, my takeaway was that Threads is really perceived as that sort of next generation in the sense that we are so tired of being marketed to all the time. We want a platform that is just more about the reality of life and the real things behind, you know, just, just that sort of difference. Yeah. Like a hashtag no filtered network kind of, right, okay. Interesting. Um, so what's the difference between that and let's say, I mean, Reddit, Reddit's pretty unfiltered. X has become pretty unfiltered. There's so many other networks. What would you say is the difference? Well, I think in the end of the day, um, the network, the social network wears, right, they are, they're still going to continue, right, as, as, as the, um, as the DVD formats once upon a time competed VHS formats competed. I don't know. Uh, it's, it's a natural competition with established players. Um, I feel like a lot of these networks, uh, particularly like X more commercialized ones, X and, uh, and Meta networks, they compete for influencers, right? So you would literally see them probably trying to attract brands to be on these networks because that in and of itself attracts followers. Reddit community to me is, is, is you're right, is quite sort of honest. But I feel at least I've always felt like Reddit was a very sort of like, it's a specialty network. I almost feel like it's, it takes a very sort of, um, specialized group of people to be on Reddit. For some reason, I, I have this, I'm old enough to know 4chan. So somehow Reddit has always been in my head associated with 4chan for some reason. I don't know. There's sort of very sort of, uh, kind of grungy, um, network for unfiltered raw content. Um, but yeah, I think they will really kind of be in the same space. And I think Threads makes no secret of it that the reason why they came about is due to not so much a demise of Twitter or anything like that, but I think uh, Twitter has had its struggles sort of before, you know, acquisition by Elon Musk with sort of innovating quickly enough to now obviously having maybe a little bit more of a political side to it. And maybe people are kind of maybe reluctant to that, but each network will offer something, right? Um, and, and, and as a result, brands will have to make a decision, but there is a possibility that Networks like Twitter and Threads will be kind of in the same mix. And if you're doing both, you may have to do both there as well. Fair for different audiences. So, I mean, I'm sure at the event there may be success stories were talked about. I mean, I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the speakers that were there and some of the takeaways that y'all had. Yeah, no, the best story there was, um, so Meta brought U. S., um, the, the, the members of the, of the, I guess the marketing team of the U. S. Olympic team. And the best story there was the best sort of success story there when it comes to Threads was a story of Simone Biles, uh, the, the gymnast that won, I guess, everything there is to win. Um, and how her performance at the event where she's, I guess, doing whatever jumps and whatever, you know, things that she does and winning all these medals and having them on her chest and all these photographs and all that, all the videos of her doing this crazy stunts, right? All of that was properly recorded, right? Sliced and diced into shorts and reels and whatnot and published and performed in a certain way. But then, um, one of the marketing people went into Simone Biles, I think room in that story was, if it wasn't room, maybe it was some other place. But in that, in that, in that instance, Simone Biles is wearing just a sweatpants sitting on a couch and she's rooting for a teammate, right? And then, and then basically the marketer just takes out the phone and just records Simone Biles being Simone Biles, the girl that she is just rooting for her friends and doing it in the most honest, unfiltered way, screaming, yelling, you know, the whole thing, right? And that video just shot through the roof in terms of just people, just it blows up and it's, it's a hit. So effectively, this highly produced content, expensive to create, expensive to make, to create, um, expensive to find. Like, you know, for example, this podcast here, I mean, we have to come to studios, we have to rent studios, right, et cetera, et cetera. Fly, you know. Fly, you know, so, you know. Whereas the phone and the recording of person's sort of honest sort of, uh, uh, behavior, like that raw behavior, um, resonates with people more. And I guess the argument there was that this content is particularly suited for Threads versus Instagram is that that's sort of how Meta sees Threads, um, as like the sort of the next generation. I think there are also some technical terms, technical sort of nuances to Threads that they, um, for those of you who are perhaps a little bit more on the technical side, um, um, technically Threads are a, what's called a Fediverse, uh, kind of, it's a kind of, it's a, so there's this movement towards decentralized social networks. So you have your Mastodon, you have your BlueSky, and Threads are part of that mix too. It's almost like, uh, where a social network could be hosted sort of anywhere, um, and then the information posted to, say, Threads, could show up in the Fediverse and as a result show up in BlueSky and show up in other networks. So, so what's interesting like from the technical perspective, that's how they build, that they're building it based on that system, which is very intriguing. Um, as is it actually on the technical side, it really reminded me of blockchain, how the blockchain world is kind of, um, you can launch a computer today with the blockchain and you'll get every transaction ever made on Bitcoin on your computer, right? So this idea of decentralizing money, and now you have this idea of decentralizing, uh, social networks. It's an interesting thought. It does fly in the face of every, of a lot of attempts to commercialize how these networks try to obviously make money through ads and through people running ads and things like that. So, um, it'll be interesting to see where it sort of, uh, where it ends, uh, and, and how these networks indeed do communicate to one another. Uh, but that's another aspect of it and how Threads is different, because Threads will be on Fediverse versus the other networks, uh, and Fediverse is short for Federated Universe, which is then roughly translates into Federated means a lot of social networks combined into one universe. Got it. So, not Star Trek. So, yeah. So, yeah, for sure. So, I think, which is also super exciting, super innovative too. So, and actually super unique that such, such large and well established company like Meta is entering the space of something that almost reminiscent of an open source, open network protocols and this like that. So super exciting too. So how does that play? I mean, just for my curiosity, how does that play into, I mean, Meta's policy going back to a very public situation, Cambridge Analytica, a couple of, a decade ago. Five years ago. Five years ago? Wow. So they've really closed down on like public content access, right? We're talking about social listening. There's so many brands out there who always want to figure out a way to publicly listen and monitor how people talk about their brand or certain topics across every network. And right now it's just impossible to do on Facebook, on Instagram, minus hashtag search. But, but with Threads being, like you're saying on, on the Fediverse, Does that open up an opportunity for that, since it is decentralized, to more openly monitor a network like that? It's a great question and I probably don't know, not only do I not know the answer to that question, I don't also know the plans that each one of those sort of players in the Fediverse has. I would probably think that there's not only reluctance to share the data, but also the legal ramifications of sharing the data are not going to go away. Right. So if you already share the post, um, on Facebook, or in that case, let's say on Threads, I don't really see anything changing with respect to that being your private message. So, um, I find it hard to imagine that that part of it will change. So I think brands that are looking to obtain data in terms of monitoring or understanding trends, I think they'll have to rely more on tools that networks provide that are a lot more anonymized. Values and trends and things like that versus on actual individual users. So I think that's kind of The nature, sort of, the situation we find ourselves in today is that I think some tools would prefer, and that's kind of the Cambridge Analytica, right? So the Cambridge Analytica, they used to be able to pull in actual, an associate, actual personal data and people's names, right? And an end was put to that, both through just the fact that that level of association is no longer possible, but also through the fact that a lot of networks, um, introduce the concept of the business accounts, uh, whereas if you are a business, then the privacy laws applicable to private individuals are no longer applicable to you. And as a result, uh, some information can be pulled on what brands are sharing. But I don't see this changing at all because to me, the sensitivity around private data and personal data. They're not, not only are they not going away, I think they're going to get more and more restricted. The whole GDPR restrictions, you know, they're only going to get more and more strict. So I sidetracked us there for a little bit. So this was an API summit, right? And so, are you able to share some of the things that are coming up that Threads has maybe announced? Are we allowed to say? Well, frankly, I don't even remember the exact numbers that were presented. All I know that Threads is growing incredibly fast. The future is extremely bright. Um, and I don't think it's a private information. I mean, I mean, they've been essentially growing amazingly well. From what I recall, they're growing a lot faster than Instagram used to grow. Wow. Which means that, you know, people, you know, the, the, the network is gaining traction. More and more brands are ending up on that network. Uh, folks are finding it, you know, uh, refreshing. Yeah. Cause that's kind of what it's all about, right? So why would you want to have an extra account, right? But at the same time, I think, people sticking to the existing networks is also a possibility. Like, my dad will continue to be on Facebook, right? And, uh, my kids will probably continue to be on, whatever, Snapchat or Instagram, and maybe Threads is for the newer generation. So I think that's totally natural, right? I mean, uh, that type of, uh, delineation, that type of, sort of, uh, association by age, by groups, by demographics, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, so I think the future is amazingly bright, and they're growing really, really fast. So a lot more users coming on. Awesome. Well, if you're a brand, an agency, considering being on Threads, you've heard it here. They're growing. They're going nowhere. If anything, they're investing heavily on the growth of Threads, on the improvement of Threads, right? Yeah. You guys were in New York. Did you guys do anything? Kind of outside of that, did they do like a networking event? Yeah, this was a very cool meeting. I mean, there was good food, there was a lot of congregating discussions amongst the various product teams. Yeah, it was a really awesome collaborative event. And I'm again, kind of going back to the environment at Meta. It is a such an impressive group of people. I kind of understand sort of them being at the top of the food chain when it comes to companies and everybody is kind of wanting to work for Facebook. But it's quite remarkable of how unique and awesome the teams are there. Uh, we were essentially being, and open to some extent, I understand plenty, uh, with respect to the legalities and, and the fact that even if they wanted to talk to us about everything they probably couldn't, and the red tape, I get all that. But still, like, we got to talk to actual people that are building Threads. The actual developers, right? We've gotten to talk to the product team members, right? I mean, the teams were out there. Every person who I spoke to was absolutely fantastical. I mean, even perhaps the more junior developer would still say and sort of explain things remarkably well, talk in a very sort of thoughtful way. Again, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm super impressed, uh, which is sort of probably, probably makes sense, right? The company that achieved so much, MetaData is, right? The only way to do it is through, um, both amazing resources and amazing environment for these people, right? Um, yeah, it's a fantastic, uh, fantastic place. Amazing talent. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to hold you to maybe bringing me along next time because it sounds like I missed out. You definitely missed out. Definitely. Well, thank you guys. Oh, by the way. So, but I should say we only allowed to bring three people. Oh, I see. I didn't make the cut. That's really what it is. That's right. So, no, that's cool. It was cool to see you guys hanging out, being able to be a part of that experience. I'm sure they're going to be hosting more and more. I know with Adam on Instagram, he doesn't shy away from sharing about the things that they're building on threads on Instagram all the time as well. So really cool to see that level of leadership and their ability to be pretty transparent as much as they can be. Yeah. Well, thanks again guys for joining us this week. If you have an idea, you have a specific topic you'd want us to see covered head over to vistasocial.com/podcast. Maybe even join us. Want to join us here in the studio, talk about marketing, some of the cool things that you've been working with at your brain or your agency. We'd love to have you here and we'll see you next week.