This week, we heard that Mark Zuckerberg was set to launch a rival social media platform to Twitter, called Threads. This text-based service would launch under the Instagram family of products and while there’s been no official launch from parent company Meta, the service is already live online at Threads.net
Right now, the service is limited to only a few of Zuck’s mates, but here’s what we know so far.
Threads is clearly going to be a mobile-first experience, much like Instagram is, with links on Threads.net showing both Apple and Android icons. The iOS app store link is already live, while the Android version is listed as coming soon.
From the Threads App Store page, we get some additional detail on the app and service.
Say more with Threads — Instagram’s text-based conversation app
The description says:
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.
The homepage on the site features a countdown timer, presumably to the public launch and at the time of writing had 1 day, 2 hours and 49 minutes remaining.
Zuck’s first post on Threads (presumably the first on the service) was posted 1 day ago and contained the words ‘Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads. ‘
Currently, this post has 370 replies and 1.1K likes, numbers that certainly won’t be repeated post-launch.
At the top of the page, there’s a Threads icon, which looks like a hastily, almost child-drawn thread icon. Clicking on this changes the site from light to dark mode and back again.
Below each post, is the ability to reply and threads offer Likes, Comments, Repost and Share.
When it comes to content, the social network is certainly not just restricted to text, supporting images and videos in posts, but certainly focuses much more on the written than the image-focused Instagram core product.
From the accounts we can see posting so far, it appears that your Instagram (or Meta) verification flows through to Threads and you’ll get the blue tick.
Profile pages for users can include links to Instagram and there are currently two tabs, Threads and Replies.
It’s a small thing, but there is one nice visual touch we haven’t seen before, it’s the visual representation of a thread linking two posts together. This appears to happen if you dive into a thread and can help you link back out to the parent thread, not a terrible idea.
Outside Zuckerberg, there are not too many names I recognise, but did discover McLaren Formula One race car driver Lando Norris is already on Threads. – https://www.threads.net/@landonorris
It will be interesting to see if there’s another land rush on usernames for Threads, or if Instagram reserves existing ones used on Instagram and allows you to be consistent between the two services.
iJustine is also one of the first on Threads – https://www.threads.net/@ijustine.
Each of these users has posted a few times, it looks like everyone is hanging on to their balls (of yarn) for now.
It also appears the competitive memes have begun.
So knowing as much as we do for now, are you going to try out Threads? Let us know in the comments.
