What is Threads?
Threads is a new app developed by the Instagram team for sharing text. It provides a separate space for real-time updates and public conversations. The app aims to expand what Instagram does best to text, creating a positive and creative space for expressing ideas. With Threads, users can follow and connect with friends and creators who share their interests, including those followed on Instagram and beyond. The app also offers a suite of safety and user controls.
All it takes to get started is an existing Instagram account
To get started with Threads, users only need to use their Instagram account to log in. The Instagram username and verification carry over, with the option to customize the profile specifically for Threads. Users under 16 (or 18 in certain countries) will have a private profile by default when they join Threads. They can choose to follow the same accounts they follow on Instagram and find more people who care about the same things. The app includes core accessibility features such as screen reader support and AI-generated image descriptions.
Threads’ feed includes posts by people followed and recommended content from new creators. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length. Users can share a Threads post to their Instagram story or share their post as a link on any other platform they choose.
Protecting /censoring the community
Threads was developed with tools to enable positive and productive conversations. Users have the ability to control who can mention or reply to them within the app. Similar to Instagram, users can also add hidden words to filter out replies that contain specific words. Users can unfollow, block, restrict, or report a profile on Threads by tapping the three-dot menu. Accounts that have been blocked on Instagram will also be automatically blocked on Threads. Safety is taken seriously with the enforcement of Instagram’s Community Guidelines on content and interactions within the app. With an investment of over $16 billion since 2016, the teams and technologies needed to protect users are being built up, and the focus remains on advancing industry-leading integrity efforts and investments to protect the community.
Compatibility with competing social networks
Threads is planning to become compatible with ActivityPub, an open social networking protocol developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This compatibility would allow Threads to connect with other apps that support the ActivityPub protocol, such as Mastodon and WordPress. This would enable new types of connections that are currently not possible on most social apps. Threads’ goal is to give users more control over their audience, and they plan to work with ActivityPub to provide users with the option to stop using Threads and transfer content to other services.
Threads aims to usher in a new era of diverse and interconnected networks, where compatible apps’ users can follow and interact with Threads users without having a Threads account, and vice versa. Threads’ public profile posts would be accessible from other apps, allowing them to reach new people easily. Threads’ private profiles would require approval from users to follow and interact with content, similar to Instagram’s experience.
An open platform to encourage innovation and experimentation
Beyond following each other, open social networking protocols offer developers the opportunity to build new types of features and user experiences that can easily plug into other open social networks, accelerating the pace of innovation and experimentation. Each compatible app can set its own community standards and content moderation policies, providing users with the freedom to choose spaces that align with their values. Threads believes that this decentralized approach will play an important role in the future of online platforms.
Threads is Meta’s first app that is being created to be compatible with an open social networking protocol. Threads hopes to join the fast-growing ecosystem of interoperable services and help people find their community, no matter what app they use.
What’s next for Threads
Threads is now available in over 100 countries for iOS and Android. Users in these countries can download the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. On the day of its rollout, it quickly surpassed 10 million users.
The Threads team says it is working on making the app compatible with the ActivityPub protocol. In addition, they will be adding new features to improve the user experience. This includes better recommendations in the feed and a more robust search function to follow topics and trends in real-time. The team says they are eager to receive feedback from users as they continue to build new features and introduce fun new ways to connect on the app.
What about threads.com?
Yeah, we’re not sure what’s going on with that. In case you didn’t notice, The “Threads” name and threads.com, is already owned by a “Slack replacement” application. It’s also the name of a 1984 apocalyptic war movie. And a magazine about sewing. Want the Instagram/Facebook/Zuckerberg Threads – head to threads.net. Doh!
