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Facebook owner to launch Twitter-like app. On Monday, Facebook owner Meta’s new Threads app, designed to compete with Twitter, became available for pre-order on iPhone and Android app stores.
The new software, titled “Threads, an Instagram app,” will be launched in the coming days and is advertised in Apple’s app store as “Instagram’s text-based conversation app.”
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” according to the app’s store description.
Thread’s introduction comes after a period of instability at Twitter since Tesla owner Elon Musk took over in October, when the billionaire restructured the firm, fired thousands of employees, and locked major functions behind a subscription paywall.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced in mid-March that it was working on a new social network whose description made it a potential competitor to Twitter.
Threads allows users to “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,” according to the app store description.
“We’re thinking about creating a decentralized, independent social network for sharing written messages in real-time,” the group stated in a statement to AFP.
Last week, Musk sparked outrage by announcing that the site will limit the number of tweets that could be viewed every day, with people who do not pay for subscriptions — by far the bulk of users — limited to 1,000 tweets per day.
The declared goal of the move was to limit third-party use of the social network’s data, specifically those feeding artificial intelligence models.