It is already the fastest growing app in history. Immediately after launch, the app was downloaded millions of times. Threads is the latest challenger to X and shows with its logo alone that it wants to compete.
Is it a plate of spaghetti? A listening ear? Or just a reference to needle and thread? There has been a lot of speculation on the internet about the logo since the introduction of Threads on December 14. Threads is the Meta alternative to X (formerly Twitter), which has been under fire since the arrival of new owner Elon Musk. Users are running away from X and advertisers are also abandoning the platform.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, saw the opportunity and decided to come up with its own version of X: Threads. Users can also post short messages there, possibly with photos, videos or links. Previous challengers such as Mastodon and Bluesky seemed promising, but were not embraced by the masses. Threads seems more promising, as 10 million accounts were created in the first seven hours after launch alone.
Not unnoticed
The arrival of Threads has therefore not gone unnoticed. This is also reflected in the many speculations about the meaning of the logo. While most social media have a logo with an image (Twitter had a bird, Instagram has a camera and Snapchat a ghost) or a simple letter (Facebook has an ‘F’ and ‘in’ at LinkedIn), Threads does. otherwise. It is an image whose meaning is not immediately clear and that naturally arouses curiosity.
According to Adam Mosseri, the big boss behind Instagram and Threads, it is certainly not a reference to spaghetti. But what then? Mosseri has announced that it is a new interpretation of the ancient @ sign. People mainly associate the real ‘at sign’ with X, where it stands for someone’s username. Another sign that Threads wants to compete with Elon Musk’s platform.
‘Risky adventure’
The squiggle in the logo would represent the conversation that someone starts and that then spreads across Threads. The simple colors represent what the platform wants to be: a place for simple communication. For the time being, many users seem to embrace the app, but the question is whether it will remain that way. Mosseri himself calls it a ‘risky adventure’ and thinks that the chance of failure is greater than the chance of success. The buzz In any case, Threads can put it to good use around the logo.
Logistics
In the weekly ‘Logostics’ section, the editors of the Dagblad van het Noorden delve into the world of logos. What stands out about a logo and why does it actually look that way? It is all covered in Logostics.