If you’ve been awaiting Twitter’s impending demise like me, you’re likely at least somewhat interested in Meta’s new Threads app, even though it comes from the company formerly known as Facebook.
The Twitter-killer/clone micro-blogging app released at 7pm ET/4pm PT, and is currently available in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. There doesn’t seem to be a desktop version of Threads yet, though it’s possible to view tweets Threads posts (or are they also called Threads?) through a browser.
As you may have already guessed, Threads looks remarkably similar to Twitter, down to how you post content and add images/videos. Since the app is built on top of Instagram’s network, you can reuse the same username, bio and follow the same people, making the setup process streamlined.
I’ve yet to spend meaningful time with Threads, but I’m impressed with what I’ve experienced so far. It’s a simple, straightforward platform that, most importantly, a certain billionaire isn’t involved with. It could be the real deal if a desktop app/the ability to use multiple accounts comes soon. it’s also worth noting that, among the other Twitter replacement apps like Bluesky and Mastodon, Threads has the highest chance of success because it has Meta’s backing.
This past weekend, Twitter’s owner Elon Musk revealed that the social media platform has reduced the number of posts users can see daily. According to Musk, verified users can now only see 6,000 posts daily, while unverified accounts can view 600 posts daily, and new unverified posts can see 300 posts. Musk later tweeted multiple times about increased rate limits, eventually landing on view rates of 10,000 for verified, 1,000 for unverified, and 500 for new unverified. Soon after this change, TweetDeck also stopped working correctly.
Why would a platform built on engagement want to limit users’ ability to use it? According to Musk, the change was made to prevent “data scraping” and “system manipulation.” In reality, it likely has more to do with Twitter’s ongoing negotiations with Google over cloud hosting.
While MobileSyrup isn’t planning to ditch Twitter any time soon, we’ll be experimenting with Threads in the coming weeks. You can follow us at this link. Threads is available in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play.
Update 6/7/2023 at 8:39am ET: Added updated details about Twitter’s rate limits.
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