Instagram’s Twitter rival Threads launches on Thursday, so here’s what it actually is

You’d have to be living under a rock to have missed the turmoil Twitter has been in since the weekend, when all users were affected by a “rate limit exceeded” error message which Elon Musk later declared as a method of limiting users to the amount of tweets they could see per day. Musk blamed it on AI data scraping prevention, but rumours have spiralled. Twitter is just not a fun place to be right now, and rivals know it. Enter Instagram Threads, Meta and Zuckerberg’s rival to Twitter that is launching on Thursday 6th July. Here’s exactly what Instagram Threads is and how it all works.

Text-based conversation

Threads is basically Meta’s answer to Twitter and you’ll link it directly to your Instagram account. Promotional text for Threads describes it as “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite 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.”

You can keep your Instagram username, and Threads seems to let you transfer your followers over to make sure you’re connected in the same way to the way you’ve built up your Instagram. From the screenshots released so far, it looks like what Instagram Threads users will be able to do on there is similar to Twitter, reposting stuff, limiting comments and replies.

Meta has a live countdown to Instagram Threads launch here.

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