Meta Launches Threads, a Text-Based App to Challenge Twitter

In an official announcement, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, revealed the launch of Threads, a new text-based app aimed at competing with Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg himself made the announcement one day before its scheduled July 6th release date. While the service has already rolled out globally, it will not be available in the European Union until Meta addresses potential regulatory concerns.

Threads is described by Meta as a “separate space for real-time updates and public conversations,” and currently relies on users’ Instagram credentials. However, the company plans to eventually make it compatible with a wider range of decentralized services like Mastodon. For now, users can log into the app and website using their existing Instagram accounts. Usernames and verification status will be transferred to Threads, and users also have the option to customize their profiles. Similar to Instagram, Meta will rely on recommendations to help users discover new accounts to follow.

Meta has quietly tested the service with a small group of celebrities, creators, and its own employees, ensuring that new users won’t be greeted with an empty social network. The design of Threads closely resembles Twitter, with support for text posts up to 500 characters, as well as photos and videos up to five minutes in length. Users can also repost content, limit replies, block and report other users, and easily share Threads posts to their Instagram Story for enhanced visibility.

This launch coincides with a tumultuous period for Twitter. Elon Musk recently announced strict rate limits that severely restricted the number of posts users could view. Additionally, Twitter stopped showing tweets to logged-out users before reversing the decision. Musk, who has criticized AI companies using Twitter data to train their platforms, attributed these unpopular moves to “data scraping.”

Threads not only poses a challenge to Twitter but also aims to enter the realm of alternatives like Mastodon. Meta plans to make Threads compatible with ActivityPub, the open-source protocol that powers Mastodon and other decentralized services known as the “Fediverse.” Meta envisions a future where Threads users can follow and interact with people on compatible apps without the need for a Threads account, fostering interconnected networks.

While the timeline for fully integrating ActivityPub into Threads remains uncertain, Meta is committed to the protocol. However, how this integration will impact content moderation and safety measures is still unclear. Unlike Instagram, where Meta sets content moderation policies, services built by other developers can establish their own standards and guidelines, similar to the diverse instances on Mastodon.

The question now is whether Threads stands a chance at becoming a viable alternative to Twitter. Users have flocked to alternative platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and T2, but none have achieved the scale of Twitter or its parent company, Meta. With over 1 billion Instagram users, Meta is striving to gather momentum more rapidly than its decentralized competitors. Zuckerberg expressed his hopes for a successful public conversations app, stating that Twitter had the opportunity but failed, and Meta aims to fill that void.

Update July 5th, 2023, 5:15 PM PT: Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads account shared a post supporting the launch of the app.