Meta's Instagram soft-launches Threads to take on Twitter
Originally set to launch on July 6, Meta-owned Instagram has gone ahead and activated its Twitter competitor, Threads, ahead of schedule.
Instagram's Threads
Twitter has seen a lot of changes over the last several months, which has led many people to look for alternatives. While there are options, it's the Meta-owned Instagram that's drawing quite a bit of attention.
And now the wait is over, as Instagram has officially launched the Twitter competitor into the wild. With Threads, Instagram is offering up a text-based social networking app, which will eventually work very similarly to how Twitter functions now.
With Threads, users will be able to follow other individuals on the platform, including celebrities, as well as businesses that join the network. And while the new network is primarily text-based, it will allow for uploading images to threads as well.
Threads looks a lot like Twitter, with usernames and profile pictures connected to posts filled with text. Users will be able to control how their content is seen, whether it's by people that follow that user, everyone on the platform, or those specifically mentioned in the thread/message.
The new social network is built upon ActivityPub, which is a decentralized social media network. That means accounts created on Instagram's Threads should also be available on other networks built on ActivityPub, like Mastodon.
Threads is available now from the App Store. It will launch later on Android via the Google Play Store.
AppleInsider is on Threads right here.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
https://www.slashgear.com/1332608/meta-threads-fediverse-new-explained/
BlueSky seems to be setup in a similar way:
https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/atproto-firstlook/
The federated network is looking like the popular way to go for social media with each network being able to communicate with the other and you pick which one you feel most comfortable with signing up to.
Threads looks very clean and fast and they have direct marketing to billions of people. They can scale this up very quickly.
The main thing that people need from chat networks is ease of use and reliability, few people are aware of the privacy implications of any online services.
A lot of companies could get in on this. Even things like Youtube with video comments. You could have an account on Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky and leave a comment on a Youtube video. The video viewer can choose where to see comments from.
Apple App Store reviews/ratings could be posted from a social network. They'd just need to get a token to verify that a user has an app. The review/rating could be seen by the person's followers.
This is moving social media to be closer to email where the user signs up to any mail service and uses any mail server. A message is tagged with a sender and recipient address, the server identifies the recipient and delivers it. The same can be done with public messages where people have an identity and they can pick any number of destinations. The destinations would be more granular like apple/appstore/appid/reviews, apple/appstore/appid/complaints, threads/account/commentid/replies.
A single app like Apple Messages could let you post to all destinations. If an account is blocked on any service, the messages get rejected from the destination.
This kind of messaging could replace everything - email, Slack, SMS, social media. It just needs a robust protocol, ease of use and reliability.