Instagram’s Threads app launches Thursday to rival Twitter

The rivalry between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is heating up – and they haven’t even started their cage fight yet.

Meta is taking aim at Twitter with the unveiling of its new “Threads” app – a microblogging platform that links to your Instagram account. According to the company, the app will go live on Thursday.

Threads is currently available for pre-order in the Apple App Store. There it markets itself as “Instagram’s text-based conversation app”; screenshots show a layout almost identical to Twitter, but with the option to keep both your Instagram username and the accounts you already follow.

“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what will be trending tomorrow,” reads the App Store’s description.

Meta did not respond to the Star’s requests for comment per publication.

Turbulence on Twitter

Threads comes during a new period of turbulence on Twitter. On Saturday, the latter implemented “temporary” limits on the number of tweets users can see, in response to “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.” Twitter boss Musk said in a post.

Verified, paid accounts can access 10,000 messages each day, while unpaid accounts can only see 1,000 and new unverified accounts can see 500. Twitter effectively becomes unusable after this limit is reached.

Another recent update will block the app’s popular Tweetdeck feature for anyone who isn’t verified, apparently intended to boost revenue for the paid verification system.

In the time since Musk bought the company last year, Twitter has started charging people a monthly subscription for verification. It also laid off a majority of its staff, relaxed anti-hate speech rules, raised prices by tens of thousands of dollars for API access, and more.

Since last year, Meta has been brainstorming how to take advantage of the chaos on Twitter; in an internal post, an employee wrote, “Twitter is in crisis and Meta needs its mojo back,” according to the New York Times. “LET’S GET THEIR BREAD AND BUTTER.”

Meta executives reportedly called their product a “healthily run” version of a social network, an apparent joke on Musk’s recent performance. Musk later commented: “Thank goodness they are run so sensibly” in response to Threads’ bloated data collection policy.

Discussions and Collection of Personal Information

In keeping with Meta’s reputation for collecting personal information from users, Threads’ privacy policy will allow the app to access data about a person’s financial information, personal information, photos, location, contacts, search history, “sensitive information” and much more.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey highlighted the app’s data policy in a tweet, with the comment: “All your threads are ours.” Musk replied to the tweet with a simple, “Yes.”

Threads will compete against a wave of Twitter-like social media platforms, from Mastodon to ex-President Donald Trump’s Truth Social, as well as Twitter itself.

These Twitter-like apps have exploded in popularity after Twitter’s recent problems; during the weekend, Mastodon chief executive Eugen Rochko said the number of active users of the platform grew by more than 294,000 and posting activity has “roughly tripled”.

Similarly, Dorsey’s new app to emulate Twitter, “Bluesky,” said it saw “record traffic” over the weekend after Musk limited the number of tweets users can see.

But Threads doesn’t start from nothing like many of its rivals. It has the resources, experience and branding of Meta to back it up, and compatibility with Instagram to attract users.

Will Threads be the “Twitter Killer” as some online observers and pundits predict?

Time will tell.

PART: