Meta Launches New Twitter Rival App ‘Threads’

This Thursday, the Facebook owner Meta is set to launch a brand new app that will rival the longstanding social media platform Twitter. 

Currently available to pre-order on the Apple App Store, the new app ‘Threads’ will be linked to  Instagram and is said to launch on Thursday 6th July 2023.

Here’s what we know so far…

Apparently, the dashboard will have a similar look to Twitter but Meta describes the new app, Threads, as a “text based conversation app”.

This is the latest move in the rivalry between Meta boss Mark Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk and there have actually been mentions of a physical fight between the pair. Let’s hope they’re not serious!

It appears that the Threads app will be a free service, compared to Elon Musk’s recent attempts to get people to sign up to Twitter’s subscription service ‘Twitter Blue’. You might’ve seen the latest of Musk restricting the number of tweets users could see, encouraging them to sway them to make the upgrade.

With Threads, there will be no restrictions on how many posts a user can see. The description on the App Store reads: “Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow.”

Despite all other attempts to replicate Twitter, including Bluesky, Truth Social and Mastodon; Threads could be Twitter’s biggest threat yet. It has been seen many times before that Meta has taken other’s ideas and made them work so we don’t expect Threads to be any different.

For example, Meta’s Reels appear to replicate TikTok and Stories look very similar to the likes of Snapchat. That being said, Meta has the resources to compete with Twitter, so we’re excited to see how this brand new app evolves the world of social media!

However, the app is also said to collect all sorts of data from your phone, including location data, browsing history and purchases. Therefore, because of this, the app won’t initially launch in the EU due to the lack of privacy protection.

Apparently, Meta wants to import personal data from the Instagram app to be able to drive personalised ads within the Threads app. Unfortunately, that would not be compliant with EU privacy law.

So, for now, Threads won’t be replacing Twitter globally but here in the UK we will see the app launch tomorrow. Yay!

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