5 things we know about Threads

From Facebook and Instagram owners, Meta, Threads is the new social media player in town. They got 100 million new sign ups in the first 5 days, with plenty of big brands and influencers leading the charge.

Hailed as a potential rival for Twitter, what are the key features of this new platform?

1. Instagram Integration

You can join Threads via your Instagram (with the same username and password) and follow all the same accounts with one click. You can even pre-request accounts who haven’t made the move yet. They will see your follow request when they do sign up.

A major pull for larger users like brands and influencers is the fact that they can carry over much of their existing Instagram following instead of starting from zero.

Sceptics might suggest this feature has been included to lure those who want to manufacture increased follower numbers without putting in the same work as would be required elsewhere…

2. Character limits and video length

The character limit for a post on Threads is 500 characters. If that’s not enough to make your point, you can also add multiple posts to a single thread.

Threads is a text-based app, but this doesn’t mean you’re limited to written posts only – you can include images with your posts too or videos up to 5 minutes long.

3. Conversational Control

In their launch announcement, Meta said they ‘built Threads with tools to enable positive, productive conversations’.

You have control over the accounts that can mention you, as well as being able to hide replies to your threads that you don’t want to include in the conversation. Like Instagram, Threads also allows you to create filters which can hide certain words from your timeline. Great for safety and avoiding spoilers!

4. No trending news

What you see in your feed is all you get.

For now, at least, there is no trending section or topic search function on Threads. You can search for users, but not hashtags or topics – in fact, hashtags aren’t a thing on Threads at all!

This will limit the platform from becoming a realtime news provider like Twitter did and likely make it harder for lesser-known accounts to get visibility and engagement. However, it may also prevent the

5. Future compatibility

While not a current feature, Meta have confirmed they are working to make Threads compatible with ActivityPub.

ActivityPub is an open social networking protocol which allows supporting platforms to become interoperable, connecting them all via a single content-sharing system.

Platforms like WordPress, Medium, and Mastodon already support ActivityPub, with others like Tumblr having shared plans to do the same.

We’re all new here

Don’t worry if you don’t have the perfect Threads marketing strategy locked down just yet. Nobody does.

It is simply too early to know what this social network will become. Threads has grown faster than others, but time will tell whether those users stick around.

If you’re curious, why not try it out? You don’t have to engage until you’re ready, but you can enjoy a good snoop! Just remember that your Threads account will be linked to your Instagram and, right now at least, you won’t be able to delete one without the other. If you’re thinking of using Threads for your business, it would be wise to set up a separate Instagram for that purpose instead of linking it to your personal account.