Twitter rival Threads has quickly attracted tens of millions of users, even though the app is just a day old. Combining Twitter-style text conversations with Instagram’s design, the service is the biggest challenge to the Elon Musk-owned Twitter. On Wednesday, the app went live on Apple and Android app stores at 2300 GMT in around 100 countries. It has garnered praise from celebrities and other influential users, including chef Gordon Ramsay, rapper Shakira, and Airbnb.
Users can upload pictures and videos to the app, but the social media platform is primarily about text conversation. Posts can be up to 500 characters, significantly more than the 280-character limit in Twitter’s main app. They can include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long. The app is reportedly experimenting with hashtags, and it also has buttons to like, repost, reply, or quote a post, as well as see the number of likes and replies it has received.
The service uses Instagram’s existing infrastructure, meaning it is a relatively straightforward process for users to transfer their content and followers to the new platform. The app also supports the same photo filters and editing tools familiar to Instagram users, and the user interface is easy to navigate for those who have used Instagram in the past.
However, it needs to be clarified whether the app’s popularity will continue over time, and some users have reported a lack of features or glitches. Some posts on the Threads app have not shown up, while some users say they cannot edit their profiles or see their posts, according to a report by tech news site Semafor. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has been tweeting to address these early issues.
In a thread, Mosseri said, “The real test is not how many people we can get to try it in the first few days but if you find enough value to keep using it over time.” He added that the team was working on a couple of additional features. These include voice notes, photo and video tagging, and post reactions similar to Twitter’s UI.
He also indicated that the company looked at options to make Threads interoperable with other social networks, such as Mastodon. This could be a big part of the app’s appeal, allowing users to follow and interact with accounts on multiple platforms.
The move is unlikely to please Twitter, which has threatened legal action against Meta over the app. A letter to Zuckerberg allegedly accuses the firm of hiring former Twitter employees to steal its intellectual property, and it also alleges that the app is copying many aspects of Twitter’s design. A lawyer for Twitter declined to comment on the allegations, and Meta said that no one from its engineering team was a former Twitter employee.
