When I was growing up, I thought General Motors had a car for anyone at just about any price point. Almost every family I knew drove a GM. Fancy people drove Buicks. Traditionalists picked Oldsmobiles. Sportier folks opted for Pontiacs. Value buyers bought Chevies. There were sports cars, family cars, wagons, pickups, all in a multitude of options, and cars across the price spectrum. The whole shebang. Oh, and Cadillac for the people who had made it. To me, “General,” meant they met every taste. Which is awesome. You don’t see that as much these days.
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Apple doesn’t have a cheap iPhone. Google doesn’t offer a premium search option. Disney doesn’t offer adult-only, all inclusives. That’s not their market. Disney is a happy place for families. Lululemon will sell me fat clothes but at prices that are stubbornly high. Most brands these days are niche. They pick one audience and cater to it. Almost exclusively. Very little GM-style portfolio theory goes on. That’s not to say generalists don’t exist. GAP has the more upscale Banana Republic brand and the more value consciousness Old Navy brand.
But do we see it in news media? Not really. Take price out of it. They’re either all ad-supported (read, free) or have similar subscription prices. So, for news, it’s mostly about style and leaning.
FOX doesn’t offer FOX Right *and* FOX Left. All their news, across all platforms (cable, podcast, digital) leans pretty much the same way. The same is true for MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, and pretty much every other major news outlet.
The same holds for news “paper” groups. A Gannett paper in town A is going to lean the same as a Gannett paper in town B. And, Sinclair stations work the same way. You can tell there’s no local independent thought when no endorsements cross a party line.
How about magazine houses — Condé Nast and such? Condé publishes: Vogue, GQ, Traveler, The New Yorker. Varied editorial to be sure. But all higher brow in their respective verticals. They don’t do downscale.
In general, media doesn’t do general. And then there’s Meta. They have WhatsApp to be immediate with your closest friends and family. Although, that’s expanding. Facebook is the place to share less time-sensitive updates with a broader group. Instagram is where pretty celebs post prettier pictures and videos. Like Disney, Meta’s brands are happy places for families.
That’s not to say that there isn’t overlap. There is. GM overlapped too. In 1964, you would never confuse a Corvette with a Buick Skylark. But, that Buick had the same body length, height, width, weight, wheel base, and wheel track as the 1963 Pontiac Tempest. And, they both came in metallic mint green. I learned that in a movie. So, yeah, some features and characteristics are going to bleed from one product to the next.
There’s one GM brand I didn’t mention. Saturn. I never got the point. Other than no-haggle pricing (yawn) it never seemed to have a market. Now it’s gone. And, there’s one Meta brand I didn’t mention. Threads. I never got the point.
With ten million followers, Kim Kardashian is one of the most popular accounts on Threads. She hasn’t posted in over a month. The “footballer,” Neymar has 14 million followers. He hasn’t posted in a year. The same pattern holds for most of the big accounts.
And, yet, Meta just said they were going to put ads on Meta because they see it as a platform that can get one billion users. One billion users doing what exactly?
News.
Did you ever notice no TVs show stock prices or breaking headlines when you’re in line at Disney World? It’s the same reason Meta doesn’t want news anywhere near their happy places. News needs safeguards. People yell at you if they think you skew one way or the other. In a family of two billion people, news will always make someone mad. Politicians from every country will call you in front of some legislative body to make a spectacle of you. Advertisers will complain. News is a social media pollutant.
Threads is where news goes to live. Well, certain news.
Forget the most-followed accounts. Kim Kardashian and Mr. Beast don’t need Threads to reach active consumers on Meta. They quit ages ago. The most “active” accounts are: Acyn, Barb McQuade, Kyle Griffin, Midas Touch, and Medi Hassan.
Acyn is the Senior Editor for Midas Touch. His thread looks like CSPAN. A series of videos featuring politicians talking. He has 77k followers. Barb McQuade, an MSNBC legal analyst has 105k followers. Her recent posts mostly promote her book. All about misinformation. Kyle Griffin. Produces The Weekend for MSNBC. 151k followers. You can guess what he posts on his thread. Midas Touch is, “unapologetically pro-democracy.” They post unflattering pictures of Donald Trump with his mouth agape. . And, finally, Mehdi Hassan. He clocks in with 246k followers. He’s the editor in chief of a new media company called Zeteo which seems to cover the left side of the democratic party.
Threads, now, it seems has a purpose. Mostly video. Mostly left of center. And, this mostly makes sense. Threads is going to be the new social home for left-of-center video news. Active accounts are going to tether Threads to mainstream media the way pre-Musk Twitter used to be. Flywheel stuff.
As you start to see more “… from Threads,” on MSNBC, you will start to see, “… from Threads,” more on CNN. Threads is going to grow. And, as we run up to an election. You might even see some election ads on Threads.