686: BREAKING: Don't Make These Mistakes on the New Threads App

0:01Okay, I have been on this ruthless pursuit to purge any clothes that I'm not actually wearing. Like if I haven't reached for it in months, it's got to go. I am trying to be really intentional about what I bring into my closet right now, which means I am only buying pieces that I know I will actually wear and use. Revolve just gets it though. I'm literally wearing my brown Autry sneakers from there right now and my new suede purse. It fits my laptop in it. So it's basically a fancy shoulder bag that works for everything. I love finding pieces like that. Things that look good, but also work hard for my actual life.

0:35Their holiday shop is live right now with all the good stuff. Sparkly party dresses, cozy sets, cute gifts, everything you need for whatever is on your calendar. And it's all in one place, which makes shopping feel way less overwhelming. Whether it's a weekend away, a big night out or a holiday party, your dream wardrobe is just one click away. Head to revolve.com forward slash gold digger, shop my edit and take 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger. Fast two day shipping, easy returns. it's literally the only place you need to shop from. That's revolve.com forward slash gold digger to shop by favorites and get 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger offer available for a limited time.

1:15So happy shopping. And I think there's something so powerful when we share thoughts and ideas where people can say, Oh my gosh, me too. Or I thought I was alone in that. And so show your personality. This is what differentiates you from being a business or a brand. Hey, my name is Jenna Kutcher and I am obsessed with all things, business, marketing numbers, and helping you to navigate both the messy and the magical seasons of this thing called life. I'm a small town mama who took a$300 camera, grew a successful photo biz, and now I work from home and run a seven figure online business. I teach you the tried and true secrets to building a career you adore.

1:54Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money, hardship, growth, loss, and marketing are all topics we discuss here. Think of this as your one-stop shop for happy hour with a gal pal mixed with business school. Pull up a seat, make sure you're cozy, and get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. Breaking news. If you've been on Instagram in the past week, you likely know that there is a new app in town. It is called Threads. And whether you're loving it or maybe you're resisting it, let's talk about it today on the show. Now, let me just preface this and say, I am not usually a very early adopter.

2:30I still haven't even really jumped onto TikTok. And I've watched these different apps like Clubhouse and Vine. And what was that one where you could like live stream? Was it Periscope? Where they all like blow up and they're so exciting and then they crash. I do feel like this one is different for many different reasons. So let's talk about threads. what is it, why I think it's going to be successful, why people are already loving it, ideas around what you should be sharing on it, and a tiny bit of strategy of what I'd recommend. And also before we dive in, I want you to know I signed up for both my personal and my Gold Digger podcast account as soon as the doors open in the early morning of July 5th.

3:10I have been having the best time on threads sharing my super random daily thoughts that I haven't had a place to share anywhere else until now. If you want to follow along and see how I'm using these platforms as we learn more and evolve on them, check out my accounts at Jenna Kutcher and at Gold Digger Podcast. All right, without further ado, let's dive on in and talk about threads. Pop quiz. Who do you think is more popular these days? Taylor Swift or ChatGPT? Now, although our feeds are flooded with hype around the era's tour, ChatGPT is actually beating Taylor Swift in search volume, which tells us that the AI revolution is upon us.

3:51That's why HubSpot's brand new AI power tools, Content Assistant and ChatSpot are all the rage. Content Assistant helps you brainstorm, create and share content in a flash all inside a super easy to use CRM. And ChatSpot, which runs on OpenAI's GPT powered tech, automates all the manual tasks inside of HubSpot to help you engage more customers, close more deals and scale your business faster. Both are designed to help you get more done, stand out amongst the competition and work smarter, not harder. Find out more about how to use AI to grow your business at hubspot.com slash artificial dash intelligence.

4:28Again, that's hubspot.com slash artificial dash intelligence to check out these tools for yourself. This episode is brought to you by Soul CBD. It is my go-to wellness brand for better sleep. Get 15 % off when you go to getsoul.com slash gold digger. Again, that's getsoul.com forward slash gold digger to get 15 % off their entire website. I'm talking gummies, drinks, tinctures, bath bombs, creams, and more. That's getsoul.com forward slash gold digger. So today I'm going to share my initial thoughts on how we can be using Threads, both as humans, but also as business owners. But if you're brand new to this app, or you're just hearing about it for the first time, or you don't totally understand what it is and why it's important, let's break down some of the basics before we get into the nitty gritty.

5:19So first, what is Threads? If you are tuning into this episode in real time, Threads is a brand new text-based app released by Meta. Meta is the company that manages Facebook and Instagram run by Mark Zuckerberg. And it launched one week ago today, which is July 5th, 2023. They are considering threads to be this like companion app to Instagram, which I think is really interesting. And what's insane about it is that it had 70 million signups in one day, making it the fastest growing social media platform in the world. In fact, Adam Aseri, who is the head of Instagram, posted this thread and said 100 million people sign up for threads in five days.

6:00I'm not sure I can wrap my mind around that fact. It's insane. I can't make sense of it. The team isn't busting their ass, but we know this is a race to the starting line. They say, make it work, make it great, make it grow. Well, we certainly did things out of order, but I promise we will make this thing great. I think that's incredible. And we're going to talk about why even his thread update is really inspiring for us as business owners. Now, how does it look? The feed looks strikingly similar to Twitter. The feed is largely consisting of text status updates, but you can also post videos and pictures as well, though I will say it is primarily a text platform.

6:38It was really interesting. Drew, my husband has not signed up for threads yet. And he was like, Hey, can I just like look and see what it looks like? And we both agreed. It's a very like visually watered down version of Twitter, but in a good way. Like it's aesthetically pleasing. It's simple to read. It's easy on the eyes. And it very much looks like a Twitter feed type platform. Now, while it looks like Twitter, it is different from Twitter though. Twitter has a 150 character limit. Threads allows you 500 characters per thread, which honestly, I very much appreciate. I feel like you can have more meaningful dialogue.

7:15You can post more meaningful content. You're not as concerned about hitting that character limit. So Twitter is 150 characters. Threads is 500 characters. Now, what's also interesting is Twitter kind of has the discover page. It's this homepage that offers trending topics and personalized recommendations. While exploring threads, it's currently limited to scrolling through the home feed of people that you follow, which is honestly kind of interesting. If you think about Facebook in the very early days, remember when they first released the newsfeed and we were all so freaked out about it? it kind of reminds me of that.

7:51I am going to go out on a limb and say that Threads will get some sort of trending or discover page maybe soon. But it does remind me of those early newsfeed days where you would log in and you kind of just see like a line item list of the most recent chronological posts. And so that's what Threads is looking like right now. Threads doesn't appear to have a post draft feature at launch. Twitter has that right now. But again, I'm assuming that they're going to get some of these different features and updates. And then under posts on Twitter, there are options where you can like, comment, retweet.

8:25You can see the number of views, you can bookmark, you can share links, but for threads, you can only like, comment, repost, or share the link. So again, a tiny bit different in terms of functionality, but I think that is mostly due to them still building the app and the platform and the functionality and the features of it. Another thing that is interesting about threads is there are no DMs. So Twitter has a direct message option for chatting privately with your followers. Threads app does not have this. This will be an interesting one to see if they add it on. One thing that I love about Threads is that it doesn't have DMs, which means that you have that more public line of communication, but it also doesn't feel like another place that you need to be responding to people.

9:04And so I actually kind of appreciate that it doesn't have DMs. I'm curious to see if they get it. And I'm also curious because if they're calling it the companion app of Instagram, it's not necessarily like they want to replicate the exact features on Instagram already, because I think there will be a lot of pushback from people saying there's too many ways to get in touch. There's too many ways to contact, but I could see them combining DMS from threads and Instagram into one universal mailbox. So like potentially linking up your threads account to your Instagram. And if they offer the DM functionality, there would probably what I'm guessing would be an option where all of your threads DMs could also be accessed from Instagram to make it a little bit more user friendly.

9:48Again, this is just a guess. Now, what's super interesting about threads is the way they've been releasing it. And I think this is really cool. So let's talk about it. They have definitely followed a done is better than perfect approach in the release of this platform because they released the app as version 1.0, aka its capabilities are not up to par yet. Now, upon release, there have been some drawbacks, such as not including a followers only timeline, users being unable to delete their accounts, and there are complaints of early censorship. I think a lot of people were feeling this whole censorship debate on Twitter.

10:28They were excited to have this platform where it didn't feel censored. I don't necessarily know how that's going to go down or what's going to shake out with that. But it's interesting as they're releasing it, they're kind of realizing, oh crap, we didn't plan for this or we didn't think through that, which is really interesting. Again, Adam Masseri thanked everyone for their excitement surrounding the app. And here's what he said. He said, we couldn't be happier with all the excitement about this app. So thank you. Thank you. But this is a race to the starting line. If there ever was one, the real test is not if we can build up a lot of hype, but if you all find enough value in the app to keep using it over time.

11:01And there are tons of basics that are missing Search, hashtags, a following feed, graph syncing, graph syncing, support, messaging, maybe we're on it. The amazing team is cranking away, but full disclosure, it'll take time. What's so interesting about how they're releasing this is they're literally like building it as people are coming and not just like people, but millions of people. And here's a big takeaway. So many of us have these amazing ideas or these businesses or these dreams that we want to pursue. And we wait to even like slightly hint at them until they're like perfect. And what I think is super inspiring about this is they're just putting it out there.

11:41They're getting real time feedback and they're doing their best to like communicate through the growing pains, but also to show that they're listening. And I just think it's so inspiring as a business owner who is prone to like wait until everything is ready and perfect. And I have all the answers. This is like, Hey, just put it out into the world. Like you're going to get feedback. That's going to allow you to make it better. And I just love that. I mean, it's interesting from a user standpoint, thinking like, we don't really know what the functionality is going to look like. There are kinks to be worked out, but I also just feel kind of inspired that they're just like going for it.

12:14And I think that's kind of awesome. One interesting thing is that as they released this, one of the things that I thought was really brilliant is that they eliminated any friction of joining and signing up. They basically made it like virtually zero effort to get your account to get on the platform. You didn't have to have a password because it was the same password as your Instagram. You didn't even have to import your bio or your photo. They were already there if you wanted to link up to your existing platform, AKA Instagram, you could even just click one button and follow all the people you already follow on Instagram.

12:50And so what is amazing is that they really focused on making this so easy for you to get on and get using it. And I think that's also a really good takeaway for us as business owners is a lot of times we have a lot of friction in getting someone to understand our offer or know what our offer is all the way through to purchasing the offer and enjoying it. There are a lot of different touch points. There are a lot of different clicks they might have to do. There are different points of communication. And so again, I think we can learn something here in that they made it as frictionless as possible.

13:24They removed as many barriers so that people could quickly and easily access and get on and start using the app. And so maybe a question to ask yourself today is where are areas that I could simplify the process, whether it's, you know, the outreach process or the communication or the way that I'm having people get in touch or the way that I'm talking about my offer. one thing that I love to do is just to really look and like make sure there are no roadblocks. Like you want to break through any roadblocks to make it so frictionless, so easy, so silky smooth. And I think that they did a really good job of that.

13:58Now, what's so interesting is I'm curious to see on the things that they are actively working on, what the timeline and what the rollout is going to look like as they continue to build and develop the app. It's going to be really interesting because, you know, now millions of people are on it. They're enjoying it for the most part and things are going to change. And I feel like people are so resistant to change, right? So we're used to this 1.0 version as we record, but what's going to happen as they start to add in features? Are we going to love them? Are we going to hate them? What is it going to look like?

14:30And so I'm really curious to see one, how quickly they are able to upgrade, update, implement and take the feedback that people are giving them? And then two, what is the rollout going to look like for these features? Are they going to like release them all at once? Is it going to be slow? Is it going to be noticeable? I'm very curious to watch this. And I think we can learn a lot based on how they do this. Now, another takeaway here to just be thinking about is, you know, whether or not you think that threads is a direct ripoff from Twitter, which is very interesting watching two male egos debate this topic, something to take away here is that this idea per se isn't new, right?

15:12Like this idea has existed. However, based on how they build it and what they do, it could be an improvement on something that has already existed. It could be this new spin, a new iteration. Instead of starting from scratch or building out this idea, they were able to see that there was already proof of concept with Twitter, right? There's proof of concept, but there was a lot of people that were disgruntled on Twitter that didn't like Twitter that had feedback about Twitter that were getting off of Twitter. And so they were likely listening to those things and then asking themselves, okay, how can we make this different?

15:47How can we make it better? And again, I think this is inspiring for us where a lot of times we feel like in order to do something great or do something big, we need to start from scratch. It has to be entirely new, a new idea, a new invention. And I just think that sometimes seeing something that already has proof of concept, but putting your own specific spin on it and making it better or serving a different audience with that offer is really awesome. And so I kind of love that. Okay. So here is what people are loving about it. I actually posted a thread and asked my audience, okay, what are your initial thoughts?

16:23Well, what are you loving about threads? So first people are actually responding. So it does actually feel like a direct line to the people that you follow, maybe your mentors, the people you look up to. What's interesting is, is that a lot of people don't have systems in place to say, have a team be running this for them. And so I am imagining like these celebrities actually posting these threads. And I think it's interesting because it feels more like a conversation versus like you're throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks or like, shouting out into the masses and like no one's actually responding.

16:56So people are actually responding. We're loving that the bots haven't totally made their way over. However, give them time. Those suckers are so sneaky. I freaking hate bots, but it's pretty botless at this time of recording. There aren't DMs, which people are loving and I agree. It is less stimulating than Instagram and TikTok, which I think is a really important conversation just around our nervous systems and how we're taking in all this information and events and all of this visual content. People are seeing content from people that maybe they followed for years, but the algorithm hasn't served them.

17:34And so it's almost like reconnecting with old friends or like seeing different types of content from people that you love and that you followed, but maybe you've been missing out on. A few other things that people are loving, no ads and fewer visuals. Someone said, it feels like the water cooler in the workplace. People are loving creating in this way as well, not having to have visually appealing posts or publishing overly curated content. Conversations are happening. It's super positive. Something really interesting is I don't actually spend a lot of time on Twitter. It's definitely not my platform of choice.

18:07And for some reason this morning, I opened up Twitter and the content that it served me was so awful. And it's weird because you know, it's algorithm based, but like, it was like some guy getting shot in the back. And it was like just really horrific content and like trigger warning needed content. And I saw that in like the first scroll of my morning and I regretted it. Like it just set the tone of like my day in an awful way. So people are saying like, they're loving that it feels really positive. And I agree. I went over to threads and it was like, what is something you're thankful for? Like, what are you eating for breakfast?

18:45I was like, okay, this is the type of content I want. And I don't know if it was like a fluke or something. I feel like Twitter can often be very clickbaity and like sharing the content that will like get your attention, which again, makes sense. The goal of these platforms is to keep you engaged and keep you on them. But the type of content I saw on Twitter was like horrific and awful. People are also loving meeting new people, loving unfiltered random thoughts and moments and something that I really am loving. And I think it's just, again, a really smart move on Metta's part is that you're not starting at zero because I just think for so many people, when you approach these new platforms, it is so hard to start back at zero.

19:28And so what is amazing is that you're bringing followers from Instagram over. And so whether it's a few hundred or a thousand, you aren't starting at zero. And I think that's really encouraging because you're already starting to get that engagement, that communication that feels exciting, that keeps you engaged. So again, super smart move, but also just really amazing. It's fascinating. I've been on Twitter for over a decade and I think I'm around 10 ,000 followers. And with threads, I've got tens of thousands of followers coming over from Instagram. Every time I go on, it's going up. And these are people that are already familiar with me and my content.

20:06So it doesn't feel like you're starting from scratch or you need to reintroduce yourself or you need to, you know, tell people who you are and what you do. It's kind of like just a continued conversation, which I think is awesome. Quick recommendation for you. If you love Gold Digger, check out My First Million, hosted by Sam Parr and Sean Puri. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, My First Million features guests like Alex Ramosi, Sophia Amoruso, and Rob Dyrdek. They're sharing their secrets on how they made their first million and how to apply their learnings to capitalize on today's business trends and opportunities.

20:42Can you believe that we're already wrapping up 2025? This year was packed with travel and so many new memories. One of my favorite moments was our team retreat in Arizona with the incredible women who helped me keep this business running. I also recently took the kids to Nashville during fall break and somewhere in between I squeezed in a trip to Puerto Rico with friends. We booked some of our most memorable stays this year on Airbnb. There's something special about finding a place that doesn't just look great in the photos but actually feels welcoming the moment you walk in. That this feels right kind of feeling.

21:15If you've got trips coming up, whether it's a family vacation, a retreat or a work trip, your house will probably be sitting empty while you're gone. Have you considered hosting your home on Airbnb and letting it work for you? It's a simple way to earn some extra income that can be put towards a future trip or home improvement projects. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com forward slash host. Okay, I have been on this ruthless pursuit to purge any clothes that I'm not actually wearing. Like if I haven't reached for it in months, it's got to go. I am trying to be really intentional about what I bring into my closet right now, which means I am only buying pieces that I know I will actually wear and use.

21:59Revolve just gets it though. I'm literally wearing my brown Autry sneakers from there right now and my new suede purse. It fits my laptop in it. So it's basically a fancy shoulder bag that works for everything. I love finding pieces like that. Things that look good, but also work hard for my actual life. Their holiday shop is live right now with all the good stuff. Sparkly party dresses, cozy sets, cute gifts, everything you need for whatever is on your calendar. And it's all in one place, which makes shopping feel way less overwhelming. Whether it's a weekend away, a big night out, or a holiday party, your dream wardrobe is just one click away.

22:37Head to revolve.com forward slash gold digger, shop my edit and take 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger. Fast two-day shipping, easy returns. It's literally the only place you need to shop from. That's revolve.com forward slash gold digger to shop by favorites and get 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger offer available for a limited time. So happy shopping. I was just listening to them talk about Sean's AI plan dinner with tech billionaires, something I cannot relate to, but I am utterly curious about. And it was honestly so clever and also hilarious how he used chat GPT to create the menu.

23:12You're going to love their candid business conversations, industry observations, and world-class advice. Listen to My First Million today, wherever you get your podcasts. Running a business and being a present mom can be high stress and both require focus, energy, and stamina. This is why getting good sleep is absolutely critical. So you can wake up ready to tackle your day. And Soul CBD helps me do just that with their line of products. Their dream capsules have 25 milligrams of pure CBD and 2.5 milligrams of melatonin. I have honestly noticed such a difference in the quality of my sleep since taking these.

23:51I keep them on my nightstand and they feel like a secret weapon that helps me unwind and rest. All of Soul CBD's products are THC-free, 99 % hemp-derived, non-toxic, organic, and sustainably sourced. They have gummies, drinks, tinctures, bath bombs, creams, and even products for your pets. snake 15 % off the entire website when you head to get soul.com slash gold digger. Whether you're stressed out, you can't sleep or you're sore from your workout relief is waiting for you. Again, that's get soul.com forward slash gold digger. I cannot wait for you to try it. If you haven't explored threads yet, and you want to know how to sign up, like if I'm getting you all excited through all these things that we're loving about it, we have posted in today's show notes exactly how to sign up for threads.

24:42You can head to the link in this show description and you can read about it. It's pretty easy to sign up or you can Google it. I'm sure that these instructions will be updated in no time. And so I just wanted to let you know if you want to get on or you haven't got on yet, we have the directions for you inside of today's show notes. Okay. So now that we've kind of covered the basics of what threads is and why people are loving it, Let's talk a little bit about strategy. Now, let me just preface this in saying, I think that this is a really wonderful time to not have a great strategy in that I think it's just a really cool way, again, to get back to that connection as a human being.