Billed as a rival to the instant messenger app formerly known as Twitter, Threads launches in Europe this week (14 December) — but does anybody care? Have any companies added a “Threads” button to their homepage yet? Can anyone even remember what the logo looks like?
For Gen-Xers, its mere name recalls a very scary post-apocalyptic TV drama from the 80s about the fallout of a nuclear bomb dropped in Sheffield.
When the Twitter alternative launched in the US earlier this year, it set the record for most downloads of a new app — with over 30 million users joining on day one. But then, nothing. According to figures and analysis from Sense Tower, 78% of users failed to actually use the app.
If that wasn’t enough of a kick in the teeth, even the Taliban, it would seem, prefers X. Anas Haqqani, leader of the hard-line Islamist group which seized power in Afghanistan two years ago, took to the X platform on the day Threads launched to proclaim that Elon Musk’s platform was “a tolerant place that allowed freedom of speech to thrive”.
As much as Twitter/X has become a magnate for extremists since Musk’s takeover, it still offers a unique platform for what’s happening in the world of politics and current affairs. As Nick Caldwell, a former general manager at Twitter told TI earlier this year, “As much as I like Threads, it doesn’t serve the same needs as Twitter used to serve — its entertainment driven, an extension of Instagram — whereas Twitter is all about what’s happening now in the world.”
Perhaps instant messaging’s future is more fragmented, comprising smaller communities with niche interests forming networks that tend to attract fewer trolls. Since Musk’s takeover, Twitter has haemorrhaged some high-profile user groups such as Black Twitter — but tellingly, they’re not migrating to Threads. They’re setting up their own safe, more relevant spaces where they feel seen: as seen with Spill, a real-time conversation platform about Black culture, and the anti-hate football-based Striver platform.
At the height of crypto mania, erstwhile reality TV star and influencer Paris Hilton named her two lapdogs Crypto and Ether, after her “passion for NFTs”. Matt Damon and Reece Witherspoon were among the Hollywood contingent reported to have endorsed crypto and, in a move that appears to mirror a storyline from the self-interested misanthrope he plays in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David appeared in an NBA Super Bowl ad for FTX that has not dated well.
The Biden administration also got caught up in the FTX mess. The ailing crypto exchange’s debtors chased the party for the $5.2 million that FTX donated to Biden’s 2020 election campaign and a further $40m donation made to the Democrats leading up to the midterm election cycle.
It would be easy to write off crypto and NFTs as Tech-Turkeys in 2023 — especially after the FTX crypto exchange debacle that saw fallen ‘crypto king’ Sam Bankman-Fried convicted of fraud and money laundering when execs at the company spent billions in customer funds that they had promised to safeguard.
However, given the right ecosystem and with the right regulations, I’d wager a few cursory tokens that crypto will make a comeback as we use physical cash less and less. We’ll also see the birth of NFT 2.0 (but given the bad press, it’s likely to be rebranded as something else).
But there’s still something fowl in the state of crypto: even when the going was good it was always an unregulated asset class. Singers, boxers, rappers, NBA players, and comedians who are known to the public, and whose fans have trusted them, were allowed to accept money from unregulated finance companies to promote highly volatile currencies.
This is a systemic failure that crypto needs to learn from if it is ever to win over investors’ and consumers’ trust again.
If a meaningless slightly cringeworthy expression can be considered a ‘turkey’ then this one was Grade A. After declaring that it was going to turn the country into a “tech and science superpower” by 2030, the UK government appeared to double down on its hyperbole this year.
With every grant announced; every tech conference attended; every supercomputer unveiled; every budget speech, and every start-up (OK, there was just one) there was a Minister on hand to talk up “the UK’s incredible science and tech success story” and how [said action] was “cementing its role as a science and tech superpower.”
The biggest culprit of this overused expression was none other than the UK’s PM. Due to his £180 smart mug (which can keep coffee warm for three hours, apparently) and his mates from the Valley, he has been labelled the UK’s first ‘tech-bro’ politician.
While it’s undoubtedly good for the sector to have a government that not only talks tech but is willing to invest in it and support reform where necessary, it’s not clear how the UK is defining and measuring its ‘superpower’ status.
And in what technologies it can be ‘world-leading’ compared to China or the US, which have invested ten times the amount into areas such as quantum and AI, as well as their own onsite chip fabs?
However, November’s conference at Bletchley Park valiantly proved that the UK can lead in certain niches, such as AI safety and security. But maybe we could just reserve words like ‘superpower’ for the Marvel Multiverse — and certainly no high-fivin’ Elon outside Number Ten.
It wouldn’t be Christmas without a few flightless birds, and there were some billionaire-backed space ventures on hand to provide us with two prime examples this year — with all the trimmings!
A small leap for man, a giant leap for connectivity — at least that was the Virgin Orbit’s hope for its satellite launch, which 2000 paying ticket holders turned up to watch in January at Spaceport Cornwall.
Formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism venture, Virgin Orbit’s set-up differed from most private and public launch services. Points must be given here for innovation.
Instead of using a vertical rocket that lifts off from a launch pad to reach space, it tucked a small satellite-carrying rocket under the wing of a modified Boeing 747, dubbed ‘Cosmic Girl’.
Its goal was to provide swift and adaptable space launch services for the growing small satellites market. Small satellites have several enterprise use cases, from providing connectivity in hard-to-reach places, crop monitoring, and carbon emission tracking, to creating maps and much more.
But despite four previous successful launches in the US, its first launch on UK soil failed. While it released its rocket, LauncherOne, carrying a payload of nine satellites over the west coast of Ireland, the company announced there had been an ‘’anomaly’ and the rocket failed to reach the required altitude.
Unsuccessful satellite launches are not uncommon in the early stages of satellite companies. Though, this was one too many for a niche player, and after filing for bankruptcy in April, the firm wound down its operations in May.
Other billionaire-backed commercial space missions not afraid to move fast and blow things up include Elon Musk’s SpaceX — which, over the years, saw three of its early rocket launches fail before a successful fourth launch.
Then again, this November saw another failure. SpaceX’s uncrewed spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon, failed in space shortly after lifting off on Saturday. Even though its second test was cut short, it made it farther than an earlier attempt that ended in an explosion.
Featured image credited to DALL-E 3
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