Why The Threads Launch Was A Masterclass In Product Marketing

0:00All right, so we're going to talk about why the Threads launch was a masterclass in product marketing. And so as of this recording, Threads came out basically three, four days ago or so. And we're going to talk about why we thought the way they went about this is probably a template for how new apps will be launched in the future to slow down other social media platforms. and the big thing that they did which was really really smart they integrated it into the community that they already had and they made it super easy to get mass distribution that's why it was a genius move it was hey we want to go after twitter we want the market if you end up just creating another social app and i think they tried to go after twitter a few times right eric and it never worked and now they're just like let's keep it simple they don't even own threads.com it's threads.net, by the way.

0:54And they're just like, just make it where people on Instagram, which is one of their most popular apps that people are super engaged on, click a button and boom, they can end up popping up something that's similar to Twitter. And they knew that people who use Twitter, you know, yes, they use Instagram, they use Snap, they may use Facebook and LinkedIn, etc. They don't want an all in one app that does everything. They like the Twitter app for what it is. So they created something similar to that just does that because it already works. But they They made it super simple and easy for anyone to onboard.

1:26And they also did it during a perfect time because a lot of people have issues, not a lot. Some people have issues with Twitter and the way Elon's running things. And I'm not saying that's right or that's wrong, but you can see a lot of interviews like him being interviewed by BBC and people complaining about Twitter. And I'm not saying he's doing a bad or a good job. So they did that to penetrate the market. and they said, hey, we're only going to do what's best for the users, focus on product, make it where there's no ads or anything like that, giving users tons of engagement. And all of a sudden, mass adoption, and it has a virality like no other app.

2:02It took ChatGPT five days to reach a million users, and that was record-breaking. And in less than 24 hours, I don't know what the numbers on threads was. Was it like 30 million or something like that? It was like 50 in 24 hours and then 72. it's at seven it's it's more than 72 million now yeah it's a ridiculous amount i don't know if anyone ever be able to beat that number in a very long time yep so a couple things here like so from a product standpoint when you try to search for threads inside of instagram search there's actually like a ticket that you can see right you click on the ticket and then this like ticket pops it kind of looks like an nft because they were getting into the nft space right it's like this NFT thing and then you click on it.

2:43The cool thing is they understood, they understand what their users want. So for Instagram, what do people want? Well, if you have the blue checkmark, you got to show off your status, right? So your blue checkmark still shows in the threads. And then the other thing is they reserve your username so you can claim your username because people want to hang on to the same thing. It's the right move in social, right? Now the other, I mean, obviously siphoning users over and saying, making it very easy to say, Hey, like this threads thing is, is available. There's a badge for people too. So people can click on it.

3:09That is, they just made it very simple to kind of port over. And the other thing I would say is, I don't know if you noticed this, Neil, but when you scroll through threads, there's a lot of people that you don't follow and you see a plus next to their name. And I just noticed that this morning, I was like, oh, it's way easier to follow and get followed. And so what happens is it incentivizes you to create more content because if you create more content, there's more chance for people to hit the plus. And so it's actually a smart loop that they've created there, which I haven't seen before. And another thing that most people don't talk about with threads is they're not available in every region, but this is why I still think it was amazing launch that they ended up doing.

3:46Most companies, when they launch a product, they want everything to be perfect. Your product, your marketing is never going to be perfect. Now is the best time. It's better to get something out now and learn from it than just wait forever before you get something out. But the key here that a lot of people get wrong with the marketing is whatever you release that works now, even if it's not perfect whatever is available has to be great so you can't just release crap and expect people to adopt if you don't have to have every feature that people want but the features you do have have to work seamlessly and really great um and i don't know if you remember the facebook rule back in the day if you can't feed a team on a pizza you got too many people that's amazon rule is the amazon two pizza teams yes jeff bezos things two pizza teams i thought that was amazon thing.

4:34So you said Facebook. I thought it was a Facebook thing. And Eric would know more. He reads textbooks much more often than I do. But either way, it was amazing what they did and the features they did release. It was a great job. They didn't need a lot of people working on it. They got it out fast. It was so effective that you even see that Twitter is now suing meta over threads when they didn't hire any ex Twitter employees to steal anything. Yeah. Even though they claimed they hired a lot of ex-Twitter employees. So we'll see how that plays out. But I don't think that's going to really have legs.

5:06So two key things that we're calling out here. So one, Threads is extremely simple. There's not a lot of trending topics right now. There are no ads right now. There's not a lot of bells and whistles, right? It's just very simple. And so you launch with simplicity. And also, to Neil's point, there's a FOMO aspect right now where it's available in the U.S. Everyone's talking about it in the U.S. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. 72 million users or whatever. All the people in Europe want it. And I did a little poll the other day. I was like, how many of you are enjoying threads? Yes, no, whatever. Is this going to, you know, are you going to be using it more?

5:35And then my third option was I don't have access to it yet. And I think 30 to 40 % of people put, I don't have access to it yet. So it's just going to get bigger. And I like it. I mean, I like the simplicity. I like how it feels very kind and there aren't a lot of bots. It's not very spammy right now. That will probably change in due time, but enjoy it while you can. And again, I would really listen to this one. The key thing here is, let's say in the future, you have some distribution on whatever it is you're doing and you're trying to splinter something out. I think looking at how they went about this launch might give you some ideas as to how you want to play your product launch, your new product launch, to be specific.

6:10Anything else, Neil? Nope, that's it. All right. Please don't forget to rate, subscribe, five stars, please. And then the next Marketing Mastermind happening in Beverly Hills, August 7th to the 9th. You can register at levelingup.com slash founders with an S. and we're going to be talking about AI stuff, M &A stuff, going to be talking about TikTok stuff as well and hiring great employees and building eight bigger businesses, sorry, without employees actually. So that is it for today and we'll talk to you later.