For those who have been on Twitter, pardon X, since way back in 2009, entering Threads, Meta's new microblogging app, gives a strange feeling of déjà vu. Like when you return to visit a place where you have fond memories and find it invaded by new "barbarians": still familiar and completely other at the same time.
Before continuing with the reviews so far, however, let's briefly look at how Threads works two weeks after its release in Europe.
How to access Threads
Threads is a social offshoot: after downloading the app you access it by creating an Instagram profile or logging into your own. In the second case, the Threads account will have a link to the Instagram profile and will also inherit the photo and username from it.
You can also decide to follow on Threads those you were already following on Instagram, either immediately or manually.
Those who have already grown tired of it by this point can instead delete the Threads account without also deleting the Instagram account by choosing the Disable option from the internal settings.
What you can do on Threads
The new social is based on threads - that is, posts, i.e., tweets - of up to 500 characters, which everyone can comment on and interact with via the Like, Repost and Share buttons.
Images, audio, videos up to five minutes in length, links, polls, Gifs, galleries and carousels can also be posted on Threads. The only media format excluded for now is livestreams.
What works
Threads also resembles the first Twitter because of its minimal graphics and the algorithm's preference for personal posts instead of hard news.
The division of the home into For You and Followed re-proposes the familiar one from X and to some extent also from Tik Tok. The choice of profiles shown seems to be based much less on the number of followers than the Instagram feed. Watch out, though: the algorithm is also influenced by the interactions you have in the other social.
Among other things, you can thankfully also see a decrease in fake accounts and "trolls" compared to X, as an effect of the filtering that Instagram allows for newcomers. Also, another plus point, it does not (yet) host advertisements.
What works less
In addition to Twitter's trademark direct and ironic posts and exchanges, users have quickly become acquainted with the other side of the coin. Many have already complained about less-than-quality content such as winking photos and threads, silly controversies, shitstorms, and problematic moderation regarding audio.
For example, in the first few hours of the app's availability in Italy, those who responded to threads by Matteo Salvini or Giorgia Meloni laconically belched. In other cases, the audios contained "only" insults or teasing.
While audios are still a novelty to be managed, the Twitter orphans are missing an important piece: trending topics. The trending words on social at all times of the day that offered a snapshot of the hottest topics, directing as many discussions.
What can we say so far about Threads
After "copying" Reels to TikTok and, before that, stories to Snapchat, Mark Zuckerberg also replicated the former Twitter and made it the first real concrete alternative to X. This so irked its new owner Elon Musk that it almost triggered an Mma fight between the two tycoons.
Globally, the app has exceeded an estimated 160 million users, and even in Italy it has been downloaded by thousands. Many (like me) veterans and fed up with Twitter found themselves there, along with celebrities, instagrammers and many curious youngsters who had never tried the former social of the little blue bird.
In the early days there was a collective thrill of excitement about the newcomer, which, however, seems to have subsided somewhat as all the features of the social were discovered. Keeping public engagement high will be the new challenge for Zuckerberg.
Illustrazione di Gloria Dozio - Acrimònia Studios
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