By Spencer Otte. Bay City News.
Less than a day after its launch on Wednesday, millions of users joined the short-form, text-based social media site Threads, which is positioned as a rival to Twitter by parent company Meta.
Owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Threads allows users to sign up with their Instagram handle and import their list of followed accounts from the photo-sharing app.
By Thursday, 40 million users, including celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Will Smith, and Oprah Winfrey.
Meta has described Threads as a text-based version of Instagram. Visually, the app looks like a mix of Twitter and Instagram. Users can post up to 500 characters and include photos, links, or videos.
At launch, Threads lacks many of the features that Twitter offers, such as direct messaging to other users or the use of hashtags. Additionally, Threads lacks a search feature and locks users into a continuously scrolling feed with a mix of algorithmically suggested posts and posts from the accounts the user follows, unlike Twitter which gives users the ability to View chronological posts from the accounts you follow.
San Jose State University professor Ahmed Banafa, a technology expert and engineering instructor, said Threads had an advantage over other Twitter competitors due to onboarding users with Instagram accounts and the expertise and scale of its parent company. .
“They have the ability to scale very quickly, which means they have the engineering teams that are used to dealing with billions of users,” Banafa said.
Threads is currently not available for download in the European Union due to data and privacy concerns.
"The EU said no, until Meta fixes the privacy settings and gives them guarantees on the use of the data," Banafa noted.
According to its app store listing, Threads collects user data, including web browsing history, phone contacts, financial information, precise location, and health and fitness information.
Threads' launch comes at a time of confusion for its biggest competitor, Twitter.
Since Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought the San Francisco social media giant for $44 billion last year, the company has laid off thousands of employees and Musk has claimed in tweets that the social media platform was facing bankruptcy.
Twitter last week began limiting the number of posts users could see per day, saying in a statement it was a temporary measure to combat "extreme" levels of data theft.
On Thursday, lawyers representing Twitter sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, threatening to sue unless immediate action is taken to stop using "Twitter trade secrets" in their code.
Banafa sees it as a "badge of honor" for Meta.
“That is a sign that they are successful. I mean, he didn't do it to Bluesky, he didn't do it to Mastadon, the others, he didn't even talk to them."
Musk has begun criticizing the rival platform on Twitter, calling attention to data collected by Threads after users download the app and responding with laughing emojis to other users mocking the Meta app.
"It's infinitely better to be attacked by strangers on Twitter than to indulge in the false happiness of hiding your pain on Instagram," Musk tweeted Thursday.
When asked for comment, Twitter's official press email automatically responded with a poop emoji.
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino issued a statement on Twitter Thursday in reference to Meta's rival social media platform.
"We are often imitated, but the Twitter community can never be duplicated," Yaccarino said.
Banafa said that ultimately, social media users will emerge victorious in the battle between billionaire CEOs.
«Here we are the winners, because the more competition, the better. The better the platform, the better the services,” Banafa said. "They are competing to keep us on their platforms."
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