Meta’s Twitter alternative Threads to be launched this week

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Instagram’s new Twitter competitor app “Threads” is slated to be rolled out on Thursday in the US and on Friday for the rest of the world, according to a listing spotted on Apple’s App Store.

The Twitter alternative app from Instagram’s parent company Meta briefly showed up on Google Play on Saturday and was spotted by mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi, who flagged some of its features on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.

Screenshots and some initial details revealed some of the app’s UI elements, including its login screen, which suggested an ability to log into the app with one’s Instagram account.

The interface, as seen on the screenshots, also appears similar to other text-based social media apps.

“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” said the app’s App Store preview notes.

“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.”

Meta has also launched a new webpage with a countdown ahead of Threads’ release.

The tech giant has been working on the app for some time now, initially under the name “Barcelona”.

The Threads app was being planned for an end-of-July release, but its launch is being sped up following Twitter users expressing frustration over Mr Musk’s “rate limiting” fiasco, 9to5Mac reported.

Chaos erupted on Twitter on Saturday as the company’s owner and chief technology officer Mr Musk announced new limits on the number of posts accounts can read in a day.

The Tesla boss said the decision was made to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”.

He had previously expressed displeasure with artificial intelligence firms like ChatGPT-owner OpenAI using Twitter’s data to train their AI models.

Many users expressed their frustration over the weekend as they got notifications saying, “Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again”.

The growing frustration among Twitter’s users has also led to a new surge of activity on rival social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky.

Threads’ rollout in this atmosphere of backlash against Twitter’s moves might see the new app get more takers.

The Twitter competitor also appears to directly port over users’ Instagram followers and following lists, instead of rebuilding their communities from scratch.