Ease off from your frustrations towards Twitter’s recent changes because another social media platform ‘Threads’ by Meta Platforms might be just another option for your microblogging needs.
This Twitter-like platform created by the owner of Instagram was expected to launch on July 6th, according to Apple’s iOS App Store listing for the app. The app also showed on Google Play Store, though the release date wasn’t included.
“Say more with Threads – Instagram’s text-based conversation app,” the app description reads. “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 favorite 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.”
Its promotional photos showed that it would come with a feature where an Instagram user can seamlessly transfer their account and use the same username in creating a profile on the new platform.
The announcement of the upcoming platform came at a perfect time after the backlash Twitter has been receiving for implementing a temporary “rate limit” on the posts a user can read for a day.
In 2016, Instagram released a feature called “Stories” where a user can post a photo or video in a slideshow format that will disappear after 24 hours and will not show on their feed – this was said to compete with Snapchat, which was popular at that time.
In 2020, the social media platform released another feature called “Reels” where a user can share and discover short and entertaining videos on Instagram, similar to TikTok.
As such, Threads was said to compete with Twitter, imposing a credible threat to the latter.
Drew Benvie, the CEO of social media consultancy Battenhall, shared with an international news site that “Threads is going to pose a huge threat to Twitter because it’s coming from the Meta and Instagram family of apps,” he said.
Benvie added, “Instagram has 2 billion users compared to around 250 million of Twitter, so it’s about ten times bigger already. If only one-in-ten Instagram users try using Threads, it will overtake Twitter in the blink of an eye.”
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