We already talked about Instagram's secret project "Barcelona" here, when it was announced on Twitter by well-known leaker and reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi. It was clear that meta was working on something similar to Twitter.
But when it will be launched, or what it will exactly be ,was still in the works.
But now we know: THREADS is coming this Thursday, July 6, and is already available in app stores to inspect. Interestingly, the URL still calls the app Barcelona.
Let's dive in!
What is Threads?
Threads is a text-based conversation app by Instagram.
On the official app store page, it says that
"In Threads, communities come together to discuss everything from the topics that interest you today to the trends of tomorrow. Whatever interests you, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things - or build a loyal following to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world."
What more do you need to know?
For accessing the app, creating a new account won’t be necessary as long as users already have Instagram accounts. They will be able to connect their profile to the new application. Users can also invite other users to join the network. Most importantly, posts will be viewed and moderated by guidelines.
What does that mean for Twitter?
After the recent changes on Twitter announced by its former CEO Elon Musk, social media lovers might welcome the new text-based app Threads with open arms.
Twitter gets more and more exclusive. Features that used to be free, such as unlimited viewing and scrolling through tweets and content, are now related to paid memberships. If users have hit their daily limit of 600 tweets (now 1000), they can only view more content when joining the paid membership. Thus, the app forces its users to pay. And even when users are part of these memberships, they still face restrictions.
Before that, it was also possible to view tweets without having an account on Twitter. Now, this also has been restricted.