The rumoured Twitter rival to Instagram has just launched on the American iOS App Store. Threads will be the name of the app, and the App Store predicts that it will be live on July 6.
It’s a good moment for Instagram to join the fight because rivals like Spill, Bluesky, and Post witnessed tremendous growth over the weekend while Twitter botched the ball with rate-limit blunders. However, Threads could have an advantage because it automatically transfers your Instagram followers and following lists. Users of Threads won’t have to start a new community from scratch because their Instagram circles will already be there.
The App Store description for Threads states, “Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow.” “Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things — or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions, and creativity with the world.”
Despite having a tight relationship with Instagram, Threads will exist independently. From the App Store listing alone, we don’t have much information, but it appears that users may like, comment on, repost, and share content. You may choose whether everyone, simply individuals listed in the post, or people you follow should be able to respond to your posts, as seen in the screenshots from the App Store.
Since information about Threads has been progressively trickling over the past few months, the news isn’t very startling. Money Control quotes an Instagram representative as saying Threads is “decentralised.” Additionally, Meta claimed that Threads would function with Mastodon, which is housed on the decentralised network ActivityPub, in leaked slides from a meeting with leading authors. We’ll have to wait and see how that rumour plays out, but if Threads is a part of Instagram, a very centralised service, this doesn’t entirely make sense. The information in the App Store listing is compatible with what we discovered from the stolen presentations, while other rumours have been mostly validated.
Not all of Meta’s side projects have been a success. Products including the anonymous adolescent app tbh, the Cameo-like Super, the Nextdoor clone Neighbourhoods, the couples app Tuned, the student-focused social network Campus, the video dating service Sparked, and others have been discontinued in recent years. However, Threads is going live at the ideal time to profit from Twitter’s ongoing mishaps. Whether or if customers want Meta to control yet another aspect of their social media experience is up to them.
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1 comment
Insightful piece