Threads is not a true competitor to Twitter, at least not yet according to Pat McAfee. The sports media mogul devoted a segment of his Thursday show to talking about the new platform and expressed a few reservations with the hype.
“We get in there last night. I log in because it seemed like everybody was doing it. I was kind of happy for a new social media app potentially becoming a part of our daily routine in our life. I said, ‘I wanna get in there. Looks like it’s fun. Looks like it’s good,’” McAfee said. “That thing is – I wouldn’t even say ‘Twitter Lite’ because I feel like lite beers are more of a beer.”
McAfee’s complaints echoed a lot of what others have said about Threads. Meta’s new Twitter competitor is not particularly user friendly. Threads users cannot control who comes up on their timeline or how they consume the posts there.
According to McAfee, the new app only has about “1/30 of the active features of Twitter,” but he says there is a reason for that.
“Twitter though has been around a long time. So they’ve been able to build and stack and add and do this and do this. So, comparing Threads to Twitter is like trying to compare a rookie quarterback to like Aaron Rodgers.”
Producer Ty Schmitt is skeptical about the trajectory of Threads and of the app’s staying power.
“It’s still in such its infancy and it does feel like they just rushed it to market,” he said. “Like Is this going to be just in my daily routine now? Like, I don’t think it is. It’s just such a watered-down version of Twitter.”
McAfee disagreed. He said that he has already found himself checking the app with some regularity and says that right now, “the vibes are high” on the app’s potential.
