Prime Minister (PM) Lee Hsien Loong may not have joined TikTok, but he is on Threads.
His first thread? An open invitation to participate in an online contest to attend this year’s National Day Rally.
A fitting first post as Singapore’s PM.
Online Contest
On the morning of 7 July, PM Lee made his Threads debut.
He wrote, “#InviteMeToNDR is back after a three-year hiatus! Want a chance to attend the National Day rally in person?”
Linking the sign-up form in the thread, he added, “We look forward to hearing from you!”
In the form, users are prompted to share “the one thing that makes you feel proud to be Singaporean”.
Previous prompts include 2016’s “What would you do if you could be Singapore’s Prime Minister for 12 hours?”
Selected responses will be given invites to attend the rally as PM Lee’s social media guests.
The deadline is 23 July, so watch the date if you’re interested.
This year’s National Day Rally will be held on 20 August at the Institute of Technical Education College Central in Ang Mo Kio.
Here’s how you can take part in the contest:
- Post your response on your Facebook or Instagram page in a maximum of 100 words, a photo, a drawing or a generated image.
- After posting your response, send it via the online form.
- Like and follow PM Lee on Facebook and Instagram.
- Don’t forget to include the hashtag #InviteMeToNDR, tag PM Lee’s Facebook or Instagram account and make your post public.
If you aren’t on Facebook or Instagram, get your friends or family to help you post on their accounts instead.
Prominent Singaporeans who have Joined Threads
If you didn’t already know, Threads is Meta’s rival to Twitter.
PM Lee’s Threads account currently has more than 17,000 followers.
Threads was released in Singapore on 6 July, making PM Lee one of the first to join the app.
Notably, his account was still private on 6 July evening.
Other famous Singaporeans have joined the app since its launch.
Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has hopped on the Threads train as well.
On 6 July, he posted a selfie with the caption, “Hello Threads!”
On 9 July, he posted his second thread with the caption, “Dropped by NDP2023 to say hi! Anyone already on Threads? :)”
Presidential hopeful George Goh has also joined Threads.
On the day of the app’s launch in Singapore, he made his Threads debut with the caption, “Time for chains.”
Besides politicians, entertainers have joined the Twitter rival.
For instance, the other Lawrence Wong, actor Lawrence Wong, has joined the app.
He has been posting consistently over the past few days.
However, singer JJ Lin’s Threads account is winning the social media game, with more than 140,000 followers at the time of writing.
Now, everyone is wondering: Which app will prevail?
It is no secret that Meta and Twitter have always had an intense rivalry.
More recently, on 21 June, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg challenged each other to a cage fight.
Twitter is even threatening to sue Threads for using its trade secrets.
At first glance, Threads looks like someone spammed “control-c, control-v” repeatedly.
Meta copying other app ideas is not surprising.
However, the tech giant has been pretty successful in doing so thus far.
In 2016, Meta (then known as Facebook) introduced Instagram Stories, a direct rival to Snapchat.
If you’re unsure which app won that battle, just ask your friends if they use Snapchat.
The answer is probably “no”.
By mid-2018, the number of daily users on Instagram Stories had far surpassed the number of daily users on Snapchat.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been flexing the app’s success as well.
On 8 July, he posted, “70 million sign-ups on Threads as of this morning. Way beyond our expectations.”
Since Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022, Twitter’s new policies have caused frustration globally.
Which may be why so many users are jumping ship.
In July, Twitter implemented a new policy limiting the number of tweets users can see each day.
Currently, verified accounts can read 6,000 posts daily, unverified accounts can read 600 posts and new unverified accounts 300 posts.
After that, users will be blocked from seeing new tweets for the day and will receive a message saying, “Rate limit exceeded”.
It’s no wonder many users are flocking to Meta’s Threads.