Meta Platforms Inc.\u2019s Instagram officially unveiled Threads, an app designed as a direct rival to Twitter, launching the most serious threat yet to Elon Musk\u2019s struggling social media site.<\/p>\n
On Threads, people can post text and links and reply to or repost messages from others.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0app<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0will let users port over their existing follower lists and account names from Instagram, Meta\u2019s photo and video-sharing app that counts major brands, celebrities and creators among its more than 2 billion users.<\/p>\n The app garnered more than 5 million sign-ups in its first four hours, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said on his Threads account.<\/p>\n That\u2019s still a far cry, however, from Twitter\u2019s\u00a0more than 300 million<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere should be a public conversations app with 1 billion-plus people on it,\u201d the Meta chief executive officer said in an earlier post on Threads.<\/p>\n \u201cTwitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn\u2019t nailed it. Hopefully we will.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of Instagram\u2019s influential users have been asking the company to make a text-based app, according to Connor Hayes, a vice president of product.<\/p>\n \u201cCreators were telling us, \u2018We want an alternative to what\u2019s out there, and we don\u2019t want to start over and have to build out a following from zero,\u2019\u201d Hayes said in an interview, without mentioning Twitter specifically.<\/p>\n Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta, have a long \u2014 and successful \u2014 history of copying products from upstart internet competitors.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s Reels feature was a knockoff of TikTok\u2019s viral video app, and its Stories disappearing posts followed the rise of Snap Inc.\u2019s Snapchat.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s apps in the past have competed indirectly for user attention with Twitter by courting news publishers, politicians and other high-profile people to favor posting on one versus the other.<\/p>\n The arrival of Threads marks the first time Meta is releasing a Twitter lookalike. The timing seems propitious for Meta.<\/p>\n Since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October, the company has cut thousands of employees, loosened its content moderation policies and put users and advertisers through a spate of technical challenges.<\/p>\n Twitter is hurting financially, too. Advertising revenue at the San Francisco-based company has declined by 50%, Musk said in March, and he recently hired Linda Yaccarino, a NBCUniversal executive, as chief executive officer to try to improve relationships with brands.<\/p>\n As of the Wednesday launch of Threads, Twitter is still\u00a0limiting<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0how many tweets per day users can view \u2014 a measure Musk called \u201ctemporary\u201d in order to fend off\u00a0data scrapers and bots<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Those restrictions are only the latest move prompting Twitter users to seek alternatives.<\/p>\n But most of the company\u2019s previous direct challengers, such as Bluesky and Mastodon, haven\u2019t built up networks big enough to give posts the reach and impact they have on Twitter.<\/p>\n Many new alternative networks are also still building out systems for managing harmful, inappropriate or violent content.<\/p>\n Threads will embark with all those mature company systems in place, thanks to Instagram\u2019s existing infrastructure.<\/p>\n The app will have the same content rules as Instagram, with the same controls for muting and blocking harassing accounts. Public figures who have verified accounts on Instagram can maintain their blue badges on Threads.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Twitter turned verification into a paid-only feature.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are looking for an experience where they have more control, and where safety is built into the product from the start,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n Another selling point, Hayes said, is that Threads is built on the same ActivityPub social-networking protocol as Mastodon and other decentralised social media apps.<\/p>\n That means people who build followings on Threads eventually will be able to use the app to interact with a wider community beyond Instagram.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the first Meta app that will be interoperable with competing products, though Hayes didn\u2019t give a timeline for that update.<\/p>\n Threads is also launching without ads \u2014 for now, the focus is to get as many people excited about the product as possible, Hayes said.<\/p>\n The app garnered more than 5 million sign-ups in its first four hours, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said on his Threads account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":499113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[11373,10424,87647,1767,73842,60669,405],"class_list":["post-499107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-elon-musk","tag-instagram","tag-instagram-threads","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta-platforms","tag-threads","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: ChatGPT web browsing feature disabled after bypassing paywalls<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"