After months of rumours, a Twitter alternative has made its appearance on Apple’s App Store. Called Threads, the app from Instagram is expected to make its debut on July 6.
It’s the app over which the narrative around a cage match between Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk has been built. The new app is coming at a time when Twitter is at its lowest point because of what Musk calls “extreme levels of data scraping”.
Meta is known to copy features from other platforms and then make them their own. Meta’s history of borrowing ideas from competitors includes “stories from Snapchat in 2016 and its short-video product called Reels is inspired by TikTok. Threads is expected to take a similar path but with a big advantage — make use of its Instagram user base. The app, which will launch on Thursday, will allow users to keep their Instagram username.
The push for a Twitter alternative started quite some months ago. At first, the app was codenamed Project 92 and it was reportedly planned after creators and public figures began clamouring for a platform that’s “sanely run” as opposed to Elon Musk’s erratic policies. There have also been reports of Meta trying to onboard Oprah Winfrey and the likes to give ‘Project 92’ a push.
Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October, many users have switched to alternative platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky . In the past nine months, Twitter has faced a lot of technical issues, most of which stem from the dearth of engineers left working on the platform. In the process, Twitter has lost plenty of users and advertisers and Musk has been criticised for how the service moderates content.
A few days ago, Musk took the extreme step of limiting how many posts users can see on the platform because he believes data is being scraped off Twitter.
Meta’s executives have discussed ways to take advantage of the chaos at Twitter. According to The New York Times, one Meta employee wrote in an internal post last year: “LET’S GO FOR THEIR BREAD AND BUTTER.”
At the moment all that is known about Threads is from the description on the App Store: “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 is, in a way, connected with Instagram and, at the same time, independent. It appears that users will be able to like, comment, repost and share posts. Once you log in with your Instagram handle, you should be able to find the accounts you follow on Instagram on the new app, and post in an interface similar to Twitter, Mastodon or Bluesky.Twitter’s existing rivals, such as Mastodon and Bluesky, are new and they don’t have the scale Meta can easily achieve. Instagram can easily get on board the many celebrities and influencers who are already on the platform. More than three billion people daily used at least one of Meta’s apps — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — in the first quarter of 2023.
At the moment, Twitter is rolling out changes to TweetDeck, which is used by many journalists and social media professionals. In about a month, TweetDeck is scheduled to become a paid feature. On July 3, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko said that a lot of people are checking out his platform. The number of active users rose by 294,000 over the weekend.
At the same time, it’s important to remember that not all of Meta’s products have been a success. In the past few years, it has pulled the plug on products like the anonymous teen app tbh, Nextdoor clone Neighborhoods and the couples app Tuned.
A few of the UI elements on Threads