SAN FRANCISCO, US — After months of speculation and secrecy,
Mark Zuckerberg’s long-rumored competitor app to Twitter is here.
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The new app, Threads, was unveiled Wednesday as a companion
to Instagram, the popular photo-sharing network that Zuckerberg’s company,
Meta, bought more than a decade ago. If Instagram executives get their way,
Threads will also replace rival Twitter, with some techies referring to it as a
“Twitter killer.”
The rollout of Threads ramps up the rivalry between
Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who bought Twitter last year. Musk has changed the
experience of Twitter by tinkering with its algorithm and other features, and
most recently imposed temporary limits on how many posts people could read when
using the app, inciting outrage.
Many tech companies have tried capitalizing on Twitter’s
turmoil in recent months. But Threads has a leg up, backed by Meta’s deep
pockets and Instagram’s enormous user base of more than 2 billion monthly
active users around the world.
In a post to his Threads account on Wednesday, Zuckerberg
said: “I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+
people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it.
Hopefully we will.” He said that Threads achieved 5 million sign-ups within
four hours of its launch.
Musk weighed in, saying he was not impressed by Threads and
claiming he had canceled his Instagram account. “It is infinitely preferable to
be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of
hide-the-pain Instagram,” he wrote on Twitter.
Here’s what to know about Threads.
What is Threads and how does it work?
Built by Instagram, Threads is positioned as an app where
people can have real-time, public conversations with one another. Threads also
helps boost Instagram, which is a marquee app in Meta’s family of products.
“The idea is to hopefully build an open, friendly space for
communities,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said in an interview.
Instagram has tied Threads closely to itself. Those
interested in signing up for the new app are required to have an Instagram
account for now. A user’s Instagram handle must also be their Threads user
name.
And people will be able to directly import the list of those
they follow on Instagram to Threads if they wish. Instagram’s verified users
will also be verified on the new app. Users can set their Threads account to be
private or public.
How is Threads similar to or different from Twitter?
Threads looks nearly identical to Twitter in many ways.
Users can post mostly text-based messages to a scrolling feed, where people who
follow them and whom they follow can reply. People can also post photos or
video to the app.
But Threads is also different from Twitter. It does not
currently support direct messaging, a feature that Twitter offers. Instagram
said it may add features to Threads if new users ask for them.
How did Instagram come up with Threads?
Instagram has made a concerted effort to simplify its app
over the past few years,. Mosseri said. As part of that effort, he said,
Threads was spun out into a separate app. That way, Instagram would not be too
cluttered by trying to make public conversations work inside its existing app.
The choice to create a new app was also hard to resist,
Mosseri added, especially at a tumultuous moment in the social media landscape.
“There was an opportunity or demand for more people to play
in the public space,” he said, referring to the changes around Twitter under
Musk. Mosseri added that the chance to challenge Twitter came about “not just
because of the ownership, but because of product changes and decisions” that
Musk and others made to how the social platform works.
How will Threads work with other apps?
Instagram’s goal is to ultimately have Threads work across
multiple apps in what it calls the Fediverse, which is shorthand for a
federated universe of services that share communication protocols. Other apps
such as Mastodon, another social network, also function in this way.
This might sound like a lot of tech speak. What it means,
essentially, is that Instagram wants to make it easier for Threads to operate
seamlessly with other platforms, which could appeal to creators and influencers
so they do not have to start from scratch on each app.
Where will Threads be available?
Threads is available for download for free from Apple’s App
Store and the Google Play Store in the United States and roughly 100 other
countries beginning on Wednesday. It has plans to expand further.
But Meta said Threads will not initially be available in the
European Union, one of the company’s largest markets. A new EU law called the
Digital Markets Act is taking effect in the coming months and limits how the
largest tech companies share data across services. Meta said it was waiting to
get more specifics about the law’s implementation before introducing Threads
across the 27-nation bloc.
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