Threads is the fastest-growing social media platform of all time, reaching 100 million users in just five days. The platform was launched by Meta to compete with Twitter after Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk and had a precipitous decline in users and quality. While it ties directly into Instagram and is built on the same technology, Threads is intended to be a town square for the internet. But can a town square thrive when it’s filled suddenly with millions of voices and moderated in the same way that made Instagram a place that was friendly for brands and few others?
There’s plenty to criticize about the company, but tell that to 7-year-old me, climbing up into that hamburger cop’s head.
Anyway, here are some behind-the-scenes pictures from the Loki McDonald’s episode. While we’re at it, here’s the McDonald’s scene from Mac and Me. And an AI-upscaled Mac Tonight commercial.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri shared some nice smaller features you can take advantage of on Threads on the web, including the ability to tweak alt text on photos and videos. Still waiting on ActivityPub integration, but I’ll take these nice improvements in the meantime.
A good content publishing API might make it a lot easier to convince publishers to post things on Threads. And maybe we’ll get some fun bots?
If you have ideas, send them to the team on Threads.
The view counts are interesting to me, especially given that the platform formerly known as Twitter launched them in late 2022. “View counts are interesting as I think if we were shipping Instagram, or Facebook, today, we would probably have them,” Mosseri added. “They give people a better sense of their reach, and generally more feedback is a good thing.”
Meta announced the rollout of polls and GIFs on Threads earlier on Thursday.
That said, Meta has eyes on making Threads a billion-user social network, so I think we might just have to get used to seeing Threads posts in other Meta apps.
If you tap and hold on a post with a bunch of tagged people on the Threads mobile app, you’ll see a menu where you can follow everyone that’s mentioned, as shared by Instagram head Adam Mosseri. Handy!
You can also copy and paste media attachments when you’re crafting a Threads post on the web.
Adam Mosseri has a lot of thoughts about Threads’ role in the news business. We have a lot of thoughts about his thoughts. We also have thoughts about the intense about-face in the Sonos v. Google speaker fight, the Apple Search Engine that wasn’t, and much more. We also have some CSS news.
Meta’s incomplete answers about news on Threads are coming up again due to recent events and how things are (increasingly not) working on the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a response to The Verge’s Mia Sato today after that edit button-adding update, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said it “won’t proactively recommend news content to people who don’t seek it out.”
Meta spokesperson Christine Pai just confirmed to me that the company currently doesn’t have plans to offer an edit history for its newly-added edit feature.
I’m disappointed that’s the case; edit histories, which you can find on other services like X / Twitter and iMessage, are really useful!
Threads has been a lot more vibrant lately, but as highlighted by deals extraordinaire Wario64, it still has its issues. Hopefully Meta can address these niche but important problems — Wario64 and accounts like it can be a great resource!
If you’re a news junkie but your Threads “following” list is feeling a little thin three months after launch, take a look at this post kicked off by CNN’s Oliver Darcy. A bunch of journalists are chiming in with their respective beats and what type of content you can expect them to share on the platform.
Also, remember you can tap the bell icon at the upper right of the app (if you’re on mobile) to subscribe to the thread for 24 hours as other people share their own areas of coverage.
Inspired by X CEO Linda Yaccarino flashing her home screen during her Code Conference interview, many of my colleagues at The Verge have been sharing their own home screens on Threads.
The fools! Now I’ve collected them and put them into a gallery here for all to see. (Don’t worry, I included my own.)
Anyway, did you get in on this bit? Share a link to yours in the comments! Or don’t. I’m not your boss.
Threads may have gotten off to a strong start, but it’s still far behind as a source of real-time news, particularly for sports fans. The latest example? ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski “forgot” to post some huge NBA news on Threads, after it broke hours earlier on X.
Sometime Wednesday morning, Threads on the web started showing a little red dot over the notifications tab. The notification dot had been a big omission to the web experience, so I’m glad Meta added it in.
Adam Mosseri says he tested the feature out on Wednesday for a quote post. Quote posts are one of the biggest omissions from the Threads web experience, so I’m really hoping it launches soon.
Now we just need Threads to not default to the “For You” feed every time I open it up.
Meta’s Threads just got proper search, but Taylor Lorenz at The Washington Post found that it doesn’t show results for some terms related to covid and vaccines as well as terms like “sex,” “nude,” and “gore.”
From the piece:
“The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” the statement said, adding that the company will add search functionality for terms only “once we are confident in the quality of the results.”
That said, as my colleague Wes Davis found, as you’re typing in terms like “covid” or “covid-19,” you might see a prompt pointing you to the CDC’s website. But if you hit enter to search for those terms directly, the results page will still be blank.
Update September 11th, 8:37PM ET: Added details about CDC prompt.
[The Washington Post]
Apple’s Phil Schiller deleted his Twitter account a while ago and then quietly joined Threads when it launched. He’s now posted about the just-announced September event on Meta’s platform, which you are free to interpret any way you wish.
We just want to know if you’re clicking or you’re hate-clicking! That’s the only reason we’re asking for constant always-on access to your microphone and trying to scan your iris and follow you around the web! We promise!
I saw this post from Dare Obasanjo highlighting Meta’s on-Threads message about its commitment to the fediverse. You can see the message yourself by going to somebody’s profile and clicking the “threads.net” bubble.
Meta has already taken a small fediverse step, and I’m looking forward to seeing the eventual support for platforms like Mastodon. It can be the new thing we all beg for now that web Threads is live.
“This is an early v1,” Tom Bender, a PM on the Threads team, said in a post. “We’re painfully aware of the feature gaps and it’s going to improve quickly.”
A bunch of my colleagues at The Verge have just gotten access, so check threads.net to see if you can post from the web, too. I should warn you that the web app isn’t quite as robust as the mobile app — there’s no notification dot when you have notifications! — but it works well enough.
He replied to me this morning to say exactly that — well, using emoji.
He said on August 4th that the feature would be arriving in “the next few weeks.” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said this week that the web version will be ready “soon” but that it “needs more work.”
Learned this thanks to a Chris Messina post on Threads. On my iPhone, when I have both Threads and the X / Twitter app installed, there’s an option to send a Threads post to X from the paper airplane icon. I guess that’s one way to try and get more people using Threads.
A blog post by analytics firm Similarweb says data from the Android Threads app show the social network has fallen to 10.3 million daily active Android users as of August 7th. That’s down from a July 7th peak of 49.3 million.
Earlier this month, both Gizmodo and CNN cited Similarweb data while reporting the Threads slump. Whether Threads could still go the distance remains to be seen, but Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is keeping a positive face for investors.
[Similarweb]
