10 million registrations in less than seven hours and already a place in Twitter trends. This is Threads, the new application launched this evening on July 5 by Mark Zuckerberg and his group Meta (Facebook). Designed to challenge the blue bird social network, the Threads application, literally “thread” in French, offers a service based on discussions and texts exchanged between online conversation communities. Attached to Instagram, which alone has 2 billion subscribers, Threads intends to encourage its users to discover this new service.
And it was with a simple “Let’s go”, posted by Mark Zuckerberg himself on his Threads account that the billionaire announced access to this new application, available in more than a hundred countries. Four hours later, the latter posted a new happy message: “We have passed the five million mark.” To access it, nothing could be simpler, you have to go through the identifiers of your Instagram account. The application directly retrieves data from said account to create a Threads profile.
The interface, considered very ergonomic by Internet users, is visually similar to that of Twitter. And in the first possible uses, the resemblance is confirmed. For example, users have the option to like, comment or re-share messages posted on the platform. The “general” thread already includes recognized profiles, such as the Netflix platform account but also media such as the Washington Post, Reuters or The Economist. Celebrities have also announced that they have created an account on this service, like Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Hugh Jackman.
Concretely, when you go to a user’s profile, it is possible to read the messages he has written, called “threads”, the equivalent of tweets. These “threads” can contain up to 500 characters and mention another user, include links, photos or even videos, with a maximum duration of five minutes.
A user can also repost messages from other accounts, like a retweet. And just like on Twitter, a second “Replies” tab exists on the user’s profile. It is dedicated, as its name suggests, to responses posted under the “threads” by other Internet users.
For the time being, however, the application is not available in Europe and no release date for this market has been announced by the company. Meta justified this choice by a desire to avoid the steps necessary to comply with local regulations. According to AFP, the group wants to take the time to clarify the consequences for the company and its products of the new digital market regulations (DMA), which came into force in early May. Indeed, the DMA plans to impose specific rules on essential internet companies, like Meta, with the aim of limiting anti-competitive practices on digital.
However, for European Internet users in a hurry to flee Twitter, there are already tips for accessing the new Meta application. Some Internet users are already beginning to detail how to download Threads from an APK file – which brings together all the files necessary to install an application – to get it on Android.
And the launch of Threads is timely. For the past week, its competitor Twitter has provoked the ire of many users. Indeed, in a simple tweet published on July 1, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter since October 2022, announced the application of temporary limits on the reading of tweets, now set at 10,000 for verified accounts, 1,000 for unverified accounts. verified and 500 for new accounts. In the process, the company also confirmed that access to its TweetDeck software would be paid for within thirty days.
What to do the good business of Meta. The group had already tried to launch a similar service in 2019, in order to compete with Snapchat. But at the time, the project had not met with the expected success. Taking advantage of the fragility of Twitter, whose organization, finances and public image were severely shaken by its takeover for 44 billion dollars by Elon Musk, the context now seems favorable to the success of a competing service like Threads.
Mark Zuckerberg even intends to do better than Twitter. The CEO wants Threads to surpass one billion users one day. A goal never achieved, so far, by the social network at the blue bird.