Meta wants to establish its own short message service with “Threads”. This is then in direct competition with Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Since Monday, July 3, 2023, the “Threads” application has been appearing in the app stores for Android and iOS in the USA, among other places. In the app description It says: “Threads bring communities together to discuss everything from the topics that interest you today to the trends of tomorrow.” If you take a closer look at the application, you get the picture of a mix of Twitter and Instagram. And that’s exactly what Meta, the company behind the app, seems to be up to.
Mark Zuckerberg wants to compete with Twitter
A lot has changed in the short message service since Elon Musk took over Twitter in autumn 2022. The tech billionaire has not only turned the company inside out in terms of personnel and laid off numerous employees. With the blue ticks, he also introduced a subscription model for Twitter. The tone on the platform has also changed. This is largely because Musk’s position is that Twitter has restricted its users’ freedom of expression by deleting or moderating certain tweets; he thus rules out such an approach. As a result, hate speech and tweets with politically extreme positions have increased since the Musk takeover, according to industry observers.
In addition, the use of Tweetdeck, a software for managing user accounts, which is used primarily by professional Twitter users, will in future only be usable with a Twitter Blue subscription. Further restrictions could follow. At the beginning of July, Twitter set a temporary limit on how many tweets users can see in a day. The limit for non-paying users has been gradually increased to 1000 tweets. However, those who want to see more can only do so with Twitter Blue.
All of this has already led to some resentment, especially since there have been more and more technical failures on the platform in the course of the restructuring. New Twitter competitors like Mastodon are already trying to take this line, so far with rather moderate success. With “threads” things look a little different from the start. Behind it is the platform Instagram and thus the giant company Meta by Mark Zuckerberg.
What can the Threads platform do?
In addition to Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp also belong to the meta group and thus some of the widest-reaching services in the world. Accordingly, the Threads app is also on Instagram and thus an already existing network over a billion monthly user connected. This will give Threads a huge advantage over other competitors right from the start.
In fact, there was an extending Instagram application called Threads back in 2019. With this it was possible to share texts, photos and videos with close friends. However, the service was discontinued in 2021 because the similarity to Facebook Messenger was too great.
The new thread looks very similar to Instagram in terms of design, the same applies to how it works – except that you can also post text without images. The subsequent functions are then similar to those of Twitter. You can interact, like, comment, share, or send posts—or “threads” as they’re probably called.
Instagram is directly responsible for the development of the app. Threads can therefore also be easily set up with the existing Instagram account. However, the new app has an additional connection to the social networking protocol ActivityPub. This allows users to easily move their account and follower base to other compatible networks – such as Mastodon.
When does thread start?
In fact, the new offer is scheduled to start on Thursday (July 6, 2023). The platform will then be available to users in the US and UK. From then on, “Threads” will in all likelihood gradually be launched in other countries as well.
Like the Irish Daily newspaper “Independent” reported, a start in Europe is not planned for the time being. This was probably the result of a request to the Irish data protection commission DPC. Since the parent company Meta has its European base in the Irish capital Dublin, the DPC would be responsible for such a request. But that doesn’t mean that “Threads” won’t be available in Europe at some point in the future. Such a move just doesn’t seem to be planned in the near future.
One reason for this could be that Meta first wants to observe how threads develop. On the other hand, the data exchange between Instagram and Threads could also become problematic in the context of the EU data protection regulation. This would affect data on location or search history, which would then automatically be shared with threads. However, this is not compliant with applicable EU law. Depending on the success of the service in other countries, efforts could then be made to make appropriate technical adjustments and roll out threads in the countries that are members of the EU.