Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday officially launched its Twitter competitor, Threads, after first confirming its plans for the app just three months ago.
The app is already off to a strong start: It received 30 million sign-ups as of Thursday morning, according to the company, including a large number of brands, celebrities, journalists and many other prominent accounts.
The mood on Threads Wednesday night felt a bit like the first day of school, with early adopters rushing to try out the app and write their first posts — and some questioning whether the app could end up being the “Twitter killer.” As of Thursday morning, It was the top free app on Apple’s App Store and a top trending topic on Twitter.
Threads could pose a serious threat to Twitter, which has faced backlash since Elon Musk took over the platform in October 2022 and has run it with a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach. But Twitter has become particularly vulnerable in recent days, angering users over a temporary limit on how much content users can view each day. And for Meta, It could further expand its empire of popular apps and provide a new platform on which to sell ads.
Here is everything we know so far about Meta’s Threads:
What is Threads?
Threads is a new app from the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The platform looks a lot like Twitter, with a feed of largely text-based posts — although users can also post photos and videos — where people can have real-time conversations.
Meta said messages posted to app will have a 500-character limit. Similar to Twitter, users can reply to, repost and quote others’ Threads posts. But the app also blends Instagram’s existing aesthetic and navigation system, and offers the ability to share posts from Threads directly to Instagram Stories.
Thread accounts can also be listed as public or private. Verified Instagram accounts are automatically verified on the app.
“The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post following the launch. “We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.”
Some users did experience occasional glitches and issues getting content to load in the early hours after Threads launched, but that is to be expected when millions of users are joining and using an app at once.
How do you sign up? (And can you leave?)
Users sign up through their Instagram accounts and keep the same username, password and account name, although they can edit their bio to be unique to Threads. Users can also import the list of accounts they follow directly from Instagram, making it super easy to get up and running on the app.
But it’s not quite so easy to leave the app. While users can temporarily deactivate their profiles via the settings section on the app, the company says in its privacy policy that “your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.” Some users have also raised concerns about the amount of data that the Threads, like Instagram, can collect about users, including location, contacts, search history, browsing history, contact info and more, according to the Apple App Store.
Where is Threads available?
The app is available in 100 countries and more than 30 languages via Apple’s iOS and Android, according to the company.
PS: Click this link to follow NewsClick Nigeria on Threads.
