02.2025 Office Talk
Are you brittle? Threads ignites a new wave in Taiwanese communities
Group Integrated Efficiency and Retail Planning Headquarters / Digital Marketing and Public Relations Group



Social media platforms are often an important source of news leaks and popular product dissemination, starting from the most popular unknown small website in the early 2000s PTT With the rise of Happy Farm on Facebook, the social media landscape continues to evolve. In the past, journalists often cited discussions on Facebook, PTT, and Dcard, and brands mainly relied on Facebook fans for official promotion. However, recently, the term "brittle" has appeared intensively in media public opinion, such as in McDonald's Hunter PR products, concert chairs, and other events, where "brittle" is the core platform that ignites public opinion discussions. Although it is an emerging community platform, the growth of "brittle" in Taiwan is very impressive, and it has risen to become the second largest market in the world. It is a new force that enterprises cannot ignore when managing their brands and communities.
The Rise and Challenges of Threads
The original name of "Crispy" was Threads, a new social platform launched by Facebook's parent company Meta in July 2023. Due to the difficulty in pronouncing Threads correctly, Taiwanese netizens simplified it as "brittle" to facilitate communication. Threads emphasizes short text interactions as the foundation, regardless of layout or the delicacy of images. There are actually many social media platforms in the market that focus on short articles, with the most famous being X (formerly known as Twitter). Meta's launch of homogeneous products this time is clearly aimed at seizing X's market. Threads, in order to rapidly expand its user base, adopted a linkage method with Instagram accounts. Within 16 hours of its launch, it had 30 million registered users, and five days later, it surpassed the 100 million mark, becoming the fastest growing community platform in history.
The time required for each platform to reach 100 million users (Source: Key Review Network Reorganize)
 However, the rise of Fengguang did not make Threads smooth sailing from then on. Its daily active users plummeted from 49 million to 23.6 million in just one week, and further dropped to 8 million a month later. The average daily usage time of users also decreased from 20 minutes to only 2.9 minutes. There may be two reasons for the decline in active users. Firstly, there is a lack of key features such as popular topics, hashtag tags, and a complete follow list; Secondly, the content of tweets is far from the topics that users are concerned about, making it difficult to maintain platform stickiness.
Generation Z loves to use Taiwan as the world's second-largest market
Since its launch last year, although Threads has not performed as expected globally, it is still the fastest-growing social media platform in Taiwan. Meta reported that Taiwan's Threads traffic accounts for 10.09% of the total, ranking second in the world, only behind the United States (25%). The average usage time of Taiwanese users is more than twice that of other countries. The initial topic that allowed Threads to take root on Taiwanese social media platforms was "politics". In the early 2024 presidential election, politicians expressed their opinions on Threads, becoming a platform for fierce competition between supporters and opponents. Subsequently, media reporters also began to follow suit. Subsequently, the emergence of a massive amount of "junk articles" became the driving force for Threads' continuous expansion.
The term 'useless post' originally referred to posts without clear purpose or meaning, often consisting of complaints or trivial sharing about daily life. Threads' writing style is different from other social media platforms, emphasizing approachability and down-to-earth atmosphere. The more vulgar the post, the more likely it is to attract likes and replies from young people. On Facebook and Instagram, users often showcase their glamorous side, but on Threads, there are fewer active users, creating a relatively private atmosphere where people can freely express their feelings or share strange stories. This' anti refinement 'trait has attracted many users who want to escape mainstream social pressure, further driving the platform's interactive activity.
As the number of users increases, many companies have also started to open official accounts on Threads. However, due to different user expectations, community editors cannot simply copy Instagram or Facebook content and need to attract attention in the form of interesting "junk articles". However, striking a balance between humor and brand image remains a challenge, as a convenience store once caused backlash and criticism from netizens for excessive "slacking off".
Moving towards commercial business traffic opportunities
As Threads users become increasingly stable, Meta further demonstrates its determination to expand its advertising revenue, announcing that it will launch advertising features on Threads in January 2025. Although this move has raised concerns among users about the disruption of its free atmosphere, it also marks a further push towards platform commercialization. How to strike a balance between user experience and advertising revenue is the key to Threads' sustained success in the future.
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