If there’s one thing we can count on Meta to do, it’s copy another app. Following the latest stretch of tweeting confusion, Instagram’s Twitter competitor, Threads, has arrived.
The new app, which launched today for iOS(opens in a new tab) and Android, is basically exactly like your old app, Twitter, but with less Elon Musk and more Mark Zuckerberg. Each post can be up to 500 characters long, in comparison to Twitter’s 280 or Twitter Blue’s exorbitant 25,000, and each Threads post can include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long — twice as long as Twitter’s two and a half minutes but far shorter than Twitter Blue’s two-hour-long(opens in a new tab) ability.
Meta already has some early adopters on the app, including Netflix, Gordon Ramsay, Shakira, Kingsley Coman, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Steven Bartlett, Seth Curry, and Gary Vee. Even more compelling: Yours truly will be on there, too.
Since Meta is already deeply involved in our online lives, signing up for Threads(opens in a new tab) is pretty damn easy. All you have to do is log in using your Instagram account username and password. Your Instagram username will carry over, but you can change that once you’ve set up your account. And it’s a bit easier to get the hang of than other Twitter alternatives because you don’t have to go searching for everyone manually — you can choose to follow the same accounts you already follow on Instagram.
Meta follows a whole host of other tech platforms promising to take over the once beloved but now pretty terrible Twitter: Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, Substack Notes, and more. Perhaps — if we’re lucky — the deluge of Twitter clones will slow down and our platform fatigue will have a moment to rest.
