Meta* CEO Mark Zuckerberg has delivered on his promise to create the Twitter equivalent of the Threads app. We tell you what we know about it and how to use it.
Symbiosis of Twitter and Instagram*
If you have an Instagram** account, signing up takes seconds: Threads will automatically transfer all your followers from one app to another. Inside you can edit your name, photo and add a profile description.
Externally, Threads resembles Twitter – you can also write short messages up to 500 characters and reply to them. The bottom panel looks like Instagram** – there are like, comment and message buttons. Posts can be reposted directly to Instagram* or to your Threads feed.
The feed seems chaotic: it mixes popular posts and posts from those you follow. The new social network does not yet have advertising and courses to promote accounts. But there are already a lot of memes.
Will Threads succeed?
Threads is not the first analogue of Twitter, but so far the most successful – in less than a day after its launch, more than 25 million people registered on the social network. Before that, Post, Truth Social, Hive and T2 were created – social networks that could not shake Twitter’s position in the market.
According to Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram*, the window of opportunity for competition has opened due to Twitter’s “unpredictability” under Musk. “Obviously Twitter was a pioneer in this area, there are many other good public communication offerings as well. But with everything going on, we thought there was an opportunity to create something open and useful for the community that already uses Instagram**.” said Mosseri in an interview with The Verge.
Victoria Prymak / Unsplash
Meanwhile, Twitter isn’t going to back down: Corporate attorney Elon Musk, attorney Alex Spiro has accused Meta* of poaching employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information”. Twitter will seek an injunction against Meta‘s use of its intellectual property, he said. Meta dismissed the accusations as unfounded, saying none of the developers involved in creating Zuckerberg’s social network had previously worked at Musk’s company.
Discontinued applications and their analogues in Meta*
The Clubhouse social network quickly gained popularity during the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2021 – and just as quickly lost it. The users of this social network organized online meetings, the so-called “rooms”, where any other user could connect to communicate in real time. Despite the fact that it was possible to register in the social network only by invitation, already in May 2021 the number of its users exceeded 10 million. In the summer of 2021, information appeared about the imminent appearance of an analog of Clubhouse in Facebook application**. It was called Live Audio Rooms. The project did not last long – it was closed in 2022.
Viralyft / Unsplash
A similar story has already happened with the social network Periscope, owned by Twitter – it allowed live video broadcasts. When the app was launched in 2015, none of the major social networks had such a feature. In December 2016, Instagram** launched the Live feature, which also allows live streaming, but it gained popularity in 2020 during the coronavirus outbreak. Periscope closed in 2021.
In the battle with Meta*, Snapchat survived. In Russia, this service is not very popular, but it is still used in European countries and the United States. The app allows you to instantly share photos with all your friends at once and automatically delete photos after a day, as well as change your status. In 2016, Instagram** launched a similar Stories feature.
In 2019, Instagram** launched a service also called Threads that let you share emoji status with your friends. But it didn’t last long, because it wasn’t in demand – it was closed in 2021.
*Meta is recognized as extremist in Russia and banned
Read the Latest Ukraine War News on The Eastern Herald.
