Threads is a new rival to Twitter, about to be debuted by Facebook’s parent company Meta.
The new listing for the Threads app, which appeared recently on Apple’s App Store, bills it as a “text-based conversation app” linked to Instagram.
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” it said.
Threads, and a few other rising hopefuls, are new competition for the ailing Twitter, which was bought last year for $44 billion by Elon Musk. Musk has unleashed a flurry of changes on the once-popular social media platform which have driven off millions of users in 2023. The latest unpopular change has been adding a hard limit to how many posts someone can see per day; 400 a day for new users, 800 a day for unpaid users, and 8000 a day for paid users. Later that day, Musk twitted that the restrictions would be temporary, and raised the limits to 500, 1000, and 10,000 respectively. They were immediately implemented this Saturday, without warning. At the same time, Musk also locked popular feature Tweetdeck behind a paywall.
It’s good timing for Meta. Threads is expected to be released on Thursday, and since it’s connected to Instagram and Facebook, it will already bear some familiarity to platforms users already know. Users will be able to import there profiles from Instagram to Threads, giving it instant traction and jumps-starting people’s networks. It’s also endorsed by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter who has expressed a lot of disgust about what Musk has done with his platform.
Threads presents the “opportunity to jump to a platform that can give them many of the things that they want Twitter to continue to be that it no longer is,” said Matt Navarra, a social media consultant.
With Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claiming to agree to a physical brawl, the rivalry is plainly hot as ever.
