Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta officially launches Twitter rival Threads

Meta has lifted the lid on its new “text-based conversation” app Threads, and it’s a lot like Twitter – in design.

Threads, an extension of the Instagram app, allows users to share text messages of up to 500 characters, as well as links, photos, and five-minute videos.

It is believed the release – which was slated for later this year – would have been accelerated to take advantage of the chaos at Twitter headquarters, where new CEO Elon Musk was heavily criticized for changing beloved positions.

Anyone who already has an Instagram account will get a Threads account with the same username, but will need to download the Threads app.

Meta rolled out Threads in more than 100 countries for both iOS and Android on Thursday, including the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

Well-known celebrities who have already used Threads as part of Meta’s promotional efforts include chef Gordon Ramsay, pop star Shakira and F1 driver Lando Norris.

Threads is free, but to get a blue tick next to your name you need to be subscribed to Meta Verified, the £10 a month subscription service.

Instagram — which was bought by Meta in 2012 for about $1 billion — has long been a place where users can share photos with a short caption.

But by comparison, Threads — which was built by Instagram engineers — is for sharing text updates and participating in public conversations.

It allows people to follow whoever they want and see their posts on a feed, which also shows featured content from “new creators we haven’t discovered yet” – in other words, people we don’t follow.

Users can also visit someone’s profile page, which is very similar to Twitter and other similar social apps like Hive and Truth Social.

On a user’s profile, there are three separate tabs showing ‘threads’, ‘replies’ and ‘reposts’ (the equivalent of retweets).

Users can also add a profile picture and a short bio about themselves to appear below their name and username – again, just like Twitter.

Instagram and Threads are so closely related that if users change their username on Instagram, it will be reflected in Threads.

In addition, anyone who wants to use Threads must have an Instagram account, so no Threads without Instagram.

Meta says her vision for Threads is to “take what Instagram does best and extend that to text,” creating a creative space “to express your ideas.”

Like Instagram, Threads allows you to follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests, including those you follow on Instagram and beyond.

“Whether you’re a creator or a casual poster, Threads provides a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversation.”

Features already available on Instagram, such as AI-generated image descriptions, have also been enabled on Threads.

Instagram staff have also built in similar security measures, such as the ability to filter out replies to your threads that contain specific words.

Users can unfollow, block, limit, or report a profile on Threads by tapping the three dots next to a particular thread.

Accounts that users have blocked on Instagram will also be automatically blocked on Threads.

In the UK, anyone under the age of 18 is automatically given a private profile when they join Threads.

Threads could be a masterstroke by Meta as they allow users to bypass much of the hassle normally associated with signing up to a new app.

Anyone who already has an Instagram account will get a Threads account with the same username.

Instagram already has more than two billion active users worldwide who have already submitted their information for the Instagram sign-up process.

Rival Twitter, which is owned by Elon Musk, has just under 400 million active users, according to analytics firm Demand Sage.

It’s possible that Meta timed the release of Threads to take advantage of the recent outrage directed at Twitter, which has put more and more features behind a paywall.

Musk revealed this weekend that users who aren’t subscribed to the £11-a-month subscription service Twitter Blue are limited to reading 600 tweets a day – although he later said this would soon rise to 800.

It spawned the trending hashtag #RIPTwitter and caused ‘delete Twitter’ searches on Google to skyrocket by 983 percent in the UK, according to comparison service CasinoAlpha.

Twitter dropped another bomb this week when it was revealed that TweetDeck will only be available to people who pay for Twitter Blue in less than a month.

TweetDeck – a desktop application that displays tweets in columns – was acquired by Twitter in 2011 for $40 million after operating as its own independent application.