Getting started on Threads (or another Twitter descendant)

How to capture attention in just a few characters

A confession — Twitter used to be my favorite platform for science communication, by far. But the Twitter that once was is now gone, and it hasn’t really been replaced. The robust #medtwitter and science communities that lived there have spread to various platforms including Bluesky, Threads, and LinkedIn, meaning these communities are no longer in one place — and the community was what made the platform great.

BUT, these other platforms are still very much worth time and attention, and each have their own niche and audience. For this week’s episode of The Communication Lab we’ll dive into these descendants of Twitter. I’ll focus on Threads as I think it’s the best for reaching a general audience (and is quickly growing, now with over 150 million daily active users), but many of the lessons will apply to other platforms as well.

These “microblogging” platforms are great for science communication because of the character limit — it forces you to be brief and break up your message into bite-size, digestible nuggets. Think of the character limit as an asset, not a limitation. Here’s how you do it.