While Elon Musk has been busying himself with selling blue ticks and limiting how many posts you can see on Twitter, his pal and soon-to-be sparring partner Mark Zuckerberg has been beavering away with Meta’s big Twitter competitor, Threads (see what he did there?).
The app launched today and has seen a quick rush of intrigued downloaders. Whether that will lead to a mass migration from Musk’s troubled platform remains to be seen. However, for anybody considering the switch, here’s what you should know…
What is Threads?
Meta—who also owns Instagram—has offered this official explanation of the app: “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.”
Threads works with Instagram
In a neat move by Meta, by allowing you to sign in via your Instagram account and then quickly follow people in Threads that you already follow on Insta, it enables the app to quickly boost its user count. Well, unless you’re using Threads to make a new life for yourself, and shunning all Insta friends in the process.
You don’t ‘tweet’ on Threads?
While in Twitter you ‘tweet’, in Threads you, slightly less imaginatively…erm… Thread. So, when you post you can say, “Hey, I’ve just posted a new Thread. And everyone will go, “oh, on Twitter?” and you’ll say, “no, on, erm Threads,” and they’ll go, “Ahhhh.” Seriously, we haven’t conveyed it right, but it’s going to be great.
What does Threads look like?
Kind of the same, really. There’s a Thread post, then a like, comment and rethread button underneath. Zuck’s not reinventing the wheel here, just making his own very similar wheel—the ‘wheele’ if you will?
What does Elon Musk think of Threads?
As per, Musk approached the build up to Threads with typical bravado. Responding to Meta chief product officer, Chris Cox’s reported dig at Twitter (“We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run,”), Musk sarcastically fired back, “Thank goodness they’re so sanely run.”
Will Threads end up killing Twitter?
In all honesty, it’s highly unlikely. Let’s be honest, we’re all too entrenched in the pain, suffering and shouting on Twitter to move our energies elsewhere at this stage. It’s not impossible of course, Threads has the financial and engineering clout lacking in previous attempts to divert your attention from the platform. Clearly the early download rush shows that. Whether that’s just out of curiosity alone we’ll have to wait and see. However, it’s going to take one hell of an incentive—or extended Twitter outage—for people to fully move their allegiances.
How can I download Threads?
Threads is now free to download in both the Apple App Store and Google Play store.