1. Meta has launched a new app to rival Twitter, aimed at users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned — and frequently changed — by Elon Musk.
2. Called Threads, the app is described as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
3. Just after midnight on July 5 in the UK, the app became available on Apple and Google Android app stores in more than 100 countries including the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan.
What are your thoughts on Threads? Have you tried it yet?
4. Users get a Twitter-like microblogging experience, suggesting that Meta Platforms has been preparing to challenge Twitter after Musk has made a series of unpopular changes. There are buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a post, and counters showing the number of likes and replies that a post has received.
5. “Threads will be a new app more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photo and video,” the company said. Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter’s 280-character limit, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.
6. Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account. Meta’s new offering, however, has raised data privacy concerns.
(1)What would you say is the most useful thing about social media?
(2)Who would you like to follow on your Twitter/Threads site?
7. Threads could collect a wide range of personal information, including contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive” information, according to its data privacy disclosure on the App Store. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey included a screenshot of the disclosure in a tweet, writing, “All your Threads are belong to us.” Musk replied “yeah.”
8. One place Threads won’t be introduced is the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules. Threads could be a fresh headache for Musk, who bought Twitter last year for $44 billion and has since made a series of unpopular changes, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view.
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