Meta‘s been hard at work on their version of Twitter. And surprise! That app, named Threads, is landing this week. On Thursday Jul. 6, to be precise.
Threads is currently available for “pre-saving” on the Apple App Store and is showing up for at least some users in the Google Play Store in Europe. The screenshots in the App Store preview look a lot like a Twitter interface, showing a “thread” (post) with a heart (like), speech bubble (reply), two-arrow loop (repost to your own feed) and paper plane (share elsewhere/directly) icons as well as like and reply counters. There’s also a preview of a reply-limiting function that divides the potential audience for an individual “New thread” into Anyone, “Profiles you follow”, and “Mentioned only”.
Most crucially, the app is connected directly to Instagram. Not only does the App Store page list its name as “Threads, an Instagram app” (not Meta, not Facebook, Instagram, OK?) but users will be able to log in using their Instagram credentials and handle and choose who to follow on Threads from the list of the people they already follow on Instagram. According to earlier reports on the app — formerly known only by the codename “Project 92” — it will have a centralized main feed, and users who are already blocked on Instagram will remain blocked by those accounts on the new platform. Meta has also apparently been working to get high-profile users on board for launch.
It may be the ideal solution for devoted but alienated Twitter users who can’t get their heads around Mastodon, are still waiting for a Bluesky invite code, or can’t face the idea of rebuilding their entire network of followers and follows from scratch on any new platform.
Meta’s building anticipation in other ways, too. As the New York Times‘ Mike Isaac demonstrates in the below video, typing “threads” into the (notoriously hit-and-miss) Instagram search page brings up a ticket emoji, which you can tap to generate your own personal… countdown ticket thing, clearly showing that we’re T-minus two days and change to launch.
It’s a little thematically confused, but the message is clear: Meta is throwing everything at their “Twitter killer” app. And the timing couldn’t be better.
The tease comes on the same day that Twitter revealed — buried in a newsy list of updates — that its widely beloved power-user app TweetDeck will be behind a big Blue paywall in a month. A significant number of the power users and professionals who are devoted to TweetDeck would likely have paid $8 a month a year ago to help support the continued provision of a service that made their experience on the platform vastly better and easier; far fewer will accept the multi-layered insult of paying money to a platform that works less well, sides consistently with fascists at an executive level, and is flooding increasingly hostile user feeds with more and worse ads, on top of the scarlet letter that a Blue check badge has become in the post-verification era.
Musk may have achieved something that this time last year still seemed impossible: making Meta look prescient, and sending swathes of Twitter’s user base into Zuck’s waiting arms.
And he’s already offering a preview of how he’s taking this potentially very real threat to his already-endangered bottom line. Thanks to Apple’s upfront guide in the App Store, you get a clear list of the information Threads will receive about you, which in true Meta fashion is quite a bit. Seen gloating about it on Twitter on Monday evening were the two people who can arguably be held responsible for us needing a Twitter replacement in the first place.
