I guess its only real USP is "automatically import your Instagram friends", except that doesn't really work properly because only a fraction of people on Instagram seem to be interested in Threads.

Its fediverse integration stuff isn't panning out because nobody in the fediverse is stupid enough to let them federate. The single thread per message instead of hashtags thing doesn't seem to add a lot either.

The "product" in a social network is the community and the culture. Despite being terminally online I can't tell you what those look like for Threads. I can for FB/Insta/Twitter/Bsky/LinkedIn/Mastodon.

It was given no thought or advertisement or anything. It -feels- like an engineering marathon to make a safe space from Twitter.

I don't know that it's a bad effort, but it's one that rose and died seemingly the same day.

I feel like more time with a good product person would have given more thought to fit, advertising, release, and so on.

Novelty

What's it lacking?

purpose. value. actual users.