Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, is said to be launching its Threads application in Europe during December. The Wall Street Journal reports on this based on its sources.
Threads was a hot potato last summer, when the new social platform gathered 70 million users in a couple of days. Although the explosive growth did not continue for long, there are currently around 140 million Threads users, of which almost half are active.
Threads is designed as a competitor to X, formerly known as Twitter. The operating principle of the platforms is very similar.
However, users in the European Union have not yet been able to join Threads, but of the Wall Street Journal according to sources, the doors are about to open even in the EU during December.
What’s taking so long?
Meta has proceeded cautiously with the European release of Threads, as the way the platform operates in the United States is not in line with the European Union’s digital market regulation.
The problem is that Meta sees Threads as an extension of Instagram, rather than a fully independent platform. For example, you log in to Threads with Instagram credentials.
It has also not been possible for the user to delete his account once created from the Threads platform without his Instagram account also disappearing at the same time.
In addition, Meta would like to use the information collected by Instagram users on the Threads side, but this does not work out so easily in the EU. Meta’s solution has been to delay the release of Threads in Europe until some kind of workaround is found.
Is this the solution?
According to information from the Wall Street Journal, Meta will offer EU users of Threads the opportunity to use the platform without a user account. In this case, however, the user cannot make new publications, but only browse the discussions made by others.
The change for all users is that in the future the user can delete their account from Threads and still keep their Instagram account. The matter was recently confirmed by the manager responsible for Meta’s Instagram Alan Mosser.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta has estimated that it will get around 40 million new active Threads users from the European Union, in addition to the current around 70 million monthly users.
Elon Musk’s own X service has more than 360 million active users.
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Quiver Quantitative