Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter rival passed 30 million signups overnight — here’s how to use Meta’s Threads app and what’s missing

Just sixteen hours after launch, Instagram’s text-based social community Threads has already surpassed 30 million signups, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated early Thursday. It was additionally the highest free app in Apple’s App Store as of Thursday morning.

The app is Meta’s reply to Twitter, which has seen a few of its customers and advertisers flee since billionaire Elon Musk acquired the social media platform. On Saturday, Twitter started limiting the variety of posts customers can learn per day to deal with “extreme levels of data scraping,” which solely served to additional frustrate customers.

A lot of Twitter options have emerged in latest months, together with decentralized messaging app Mastodon and Bluesky, which is backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. But neither platform has been in a position to match Twitter’s person base and recognition.

Threads might have a neater time attracting customers. It’s constructed on high of Instagram and is mechanically linked to a person’s account on the photo-sharing app. Initially, customers may solely entry the service by means of a roundabout approach within the Instagram app. But as of Thursday, the app is offered for obtain from Apple’s App Store, and it is free to make use of.

Users are required to have an Instagram account to be able to use Threads. Once you obtain the app, it should immediate you to login utilizing your Instagram account. From there, Threads will mechanically port over your Instagram username, however you’ll be able to nonetheless customise your profile.

Threads provides you the choice to mechanically comply with the entire similar accounts you comply with on Instagram, or just some of them, in order that you do not have to painstakingly find all your pals and followers on Threads.

Meta is pitching Threads as Instagram’s “text-based conversation app.” And in some ways, Threads appears to be like similar to Twitter.

Users primarily publish text-based messages, or “threads,” which are restricted to 500 characters every. You can tag particular customers in a thread through the use of the @ image in entrance of their username. Users can restrict replies on their thread to solely their followers, or individuals they’ve tagged within the publish. You may embody images or movies in a thread.

Threads seem in a scrolling feed, the place customers can like, reply, repost or quote different customers’ threads.

Threads might look lots like its rival, nevertheless it’s lacking some crucial options.

The most evident omission is direct messaging, or DMs. One-on-one, non-public messaging is a trademark of practically each different main social media community, together with Twitter and Meta’s personal Instagram and Facebook. Threads did not launch with direct messaging, which may pose an issue for journalists, who usually obtain messages from potential sources, or for manufacturers, which may provide customer support by means of social media messaging.

The Threads feed pulls in posts from all customers, not simply those you comply with. It might be exhausting to search out the content material posted by the customers or manufacturers that you’ve got adopted, and as of now, there is not any approach to change the best way the feed hundreds.

Like Instagram, Threads is not serving up posts in a chronological order. Content is seemingly algorithmically ranked and served as much as customers it doesn’t matter what time it is posted.

There are additionally no paid adverts in Threads, but. Many manufacturers have already joined up, although. Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who oversees the brand new app, informed the Verge that promoting could be a “champagne problem” if Threads is ready to scale.

Threads additionally lacks the flexibility to incorporate hashtags in posts. Hashtags are a core function of Twitter, and have made it simple for customers to find posts below a sure matter, in addition to floor trending content material in a single place. Similarly, Threads would not have a function that permits customers to seek for particular textual content or phrases.

Another key differentiator is that Threads would not have a desktop web site, so you’ll be able to solely entry the service through iOS or Android apps.

There’s additionally one vital draw back to Threads being linked to Instagram. For now, Meta says there is not any approach to delete your Threads account with out additionally deleting your Instagram account.