Facebook owner Meta’s new Threads app, meant to compete with
Twitter, was available for pre-order on mobile app stores on iPhone and Android
operating systems on Monday.
Listed as “Threads, an Instagram app,” the new program
should be available in the coming days, and is described on Apple’s app store
as “Instagram’s text-based conversation app.”
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss
everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending
tomorrow,” says the app’s description on the store.
Thread’s launch comes after a period of uncertainty at
Twitter since Tesla owner Elon Musk took over in October, with the billionaire
restructuring the company, firing thousands and placing many features behind a
subscription paywall.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram,
announced in mid-March that it was working on a new social network whose
description made it a potential competitor to Twitter.
Threads will enable users to “connect directly with your
favorite creators and others who love the same things — or build a loyal
following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the
world,” according to its app store description.
“We’re thinking about a decentralized, independent social
network for sharing written messages in real time,” the group said in a
statement sent to AFP.
Twitter provoked ire last week when Musk announced that the
platform would limit the number of tweets that could be read per day, with
people not paying for subscriptions — by far the majority of users — limited to
1,000 tweets a day.
The stated aim of the decision was to limit the use of the
social network’s data by third parties, in particular companies feeding
artificial intelligence models.
