After months of rumors, it looks like Meta’s Twitter competitor finally has a launch date. Starting July 6, internet users will be able to download Threads, an app that will reportedly try to market itself as the sane alternative to the chaos of Twitter under Elon Musk.
The Threads app was first spotted on the Google Play store in Europe on Monday morning, and by Monday night it had appeared in the Apple App Store. The app is currently listed as having a July 6 launch date, though that couldn’t be independently confirmed with Meta.
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” the description for the Threads app explains.
“Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things—or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world,” the Threads app description continued.
Tech news outlet Platformer was the first to report on the existence of Threads back in March, though we didn’t get many details at the time. Then, less than two weeks ago, the Verge reported Threads would likely be launched in mid-July. And while I’d argue that July 6 should be considered early July, there’s definitely the possibility that Meta pushed the original plan to launch by a week. That would make sense, given the sheer number of unforced errors Twitter has experienced over the weekend.
In fact, Twitter owner Elon Musk announced on Saturday that most users would be limited to reading just 600 tweets in a single day, something the Atlantic compared to instituting a 12-item limit at Costco. Musk revised those numbers upward over the course of Saturday, and it’s not clear what the current limit may be. But that was enough for a large number of Twitter power users to flee the site, causing competitor Bluesky to crash on Saturday.
Bluesky, which was founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, even had to temporarily pause new sign-ups for the platform on Saturday, but things appear to be operating normally again. Unfortunately for most people, however, Bluesky isn’t an alternative at the moment because it’s only accepting new users through a limited invitation system. And that’s where Meta must be chomping at the bit to get in the game with its competitor.
Threads looks like it will be open to anyone at launch, and existing Instagram users will even be able to use their existing screen name in the new app. The earliest screenshots of Threads make it look like a mash-up of Instagram and Twitter, though obviously there’s not much to go on at this point.
The Verge reported last month that celebrities were being courted to use Threads, and Meta has apparently been pitching the social media app as a “sanely run” platform.
Meanwhile, Musk has been cozying up to far-right figures on Twitter, a decision that has made plenty of advertisers nervous, according to multiple reports. The billionaire owner even recently decided to declare that “cisgender,” a completely inoffensive term, was now a slur. Musk hired NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino to become CEO in early June, but she’s been largely invisible on Twitter and hasn’t been providing updates on the latest “rate limiting” problems at the company.
To make matters even more strange, neither Yaccarino nor Musk have talked with Twitter staff internally about what’s happening with the limit on tweets, according to a new report from Insider. Apparently questions posed by Twitter staff in the internal company Slack have gone unanswered.
Twitter also announced on Monday that Tweetdeck, a much beloved feature, would become a subscription-only feature starting next month. Obviously Musk has decided that rather than offering new features at Twitter and trying to monetize those, he’ll just put features that were previously free behind a paywall.
Meta did not immediately respond to questions emailed Monday evening. I’ll update this article if I hear back.
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