Instagram’s Threads app, a text-based social media platform touted to become Twitter’s latest rival, has been launched and is now available to users in more than 100 countries.
Threads will function similarly to Twitter, with text-based posts that can be liked, commented on, and shared, according to examples of screenshots on the App Store listing.
A message on Threads’ in the app store noted it is “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow.”
Here are, however, seven things to expect from the app:
Post
It can be shared on Instagram and vice versa and can include links, photos,and videos of up to five minutes in length.
Followers
It will directly port users’ existing Instagram followers and the following list, eliminating the need to build a community from scratch.
Content
It will allow its users to follow and connect directly with their favourite creators and others who love the same things, or build loyal followers of their own to share their ideas, opinions, and creativity with the world.
Users see a feed of posts, which Meta calls “threads”, from people they follow as well as recommended content.
Verification Badge
Meta, the parent company of Instagram Threads, is likely to charge $14.99 as a monthly subscription for blue-tick verification for its app and $11.99 for its web version.
Characters
It is closely connected with Instagram and will likely experience similar character features of 125 caption characters, 150 characters for the bio, and 30 characters for the user name.
Limits
It may not face reading limits, but action limits of 500 actions a day.
Control
Unfollowing, blocking, restricting, or reporting other profiles is also possible, and any accounts users block on Instagram are automatically blocked on Threads.
Also, users are able to control who can “mention” them and filter out replies to posts that contain specific words.
However, some early users on Wednesday reported problems when uploading images, hinting at teething problems.
While Meta stresses its ties to Instagram, media coverage has focused on its similarity to Twitter, with some investors describing the app as a “Twitter killer”.
On Saturday, Twitter boss Elon Musk restricted the number of tweets users could see on his platform per day, citing extreme “data scraping”.
It was Mr. Musk’s latest push to get users to sign up for Twitter Blue, the platform’s subscription service.
Twitter has also announced that its popular user dashboard, TweetDeck, will go behind a paywall in 30 days’ time.
Since Mr. Musk took over, many users of Twitter have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the platform and his stewardship, citing erratic behaviour and political views.
Last month, Mr. Musk and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg agreed—possibly in jest—to a cage fight, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s early posts on Threads mentioned his interest in mixed martial arts.
While Threads will be available in the UK, it is not yet available in the EU because of regulatory uncertainty, particularly around the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
But the company says it is looking into launching in the EU.
That act lays down rules on how large companies such as Meta can share data between platforms that they own. The sharing of data between Threads and Instagram is part of the issue.
