According Apple's favourite newspaper The New York Times Threads promising start was typical when a big tech company with billions of users introduces a new social network.

Using the popularity and scale of its existing products, the company intends to make the new social platform a success. In doing so, it also plans to squash a leading competitor's app.

However, this has been seen before. In 2011 and Google rolled out a social network called Google+, which was aimed as its "Facebook killer." Google thrust the new site in front of many of its users who relied on its search and other products, expanding Google+ to more than 90 million users within the first year.

But by 2018, Google+ was relegated to the ash heap of history. Despite the internet search giant's enormous audience, its social network failed to catch on as people continued flocking to Facebook -- and later to Instagram and other social apps.

In the history of Silicon Valley, big tech companies have often become even bigger tech companies by using their scale as a built-in advantage. But as Google+ shows, bigness alone is no guarantee of winning the fickle and faddish social media market.

This is the challenge that Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, now faces as he tries to dislodge Twitter and make Threads the prime app for real-time, public conversations. If tech history is any guide, size and scale are solid footholds -- but ultimately can only go so far. What comes next is much harder. 

For Threads to work, Zuckerberg needs people to be able to find friends and influencers on Threads in the serendipitous and sometimes weird ways that Twitter managed to accomplish. He needs to make sure Threads isn't filled with spam and grifters. He needs people to be patient about app updates that are in the works.

If he can't manage that then the bubble will burst and people will go back to Twitter.