Earlier in the week, it was discovered that Threads, an Instagram app, will go live today. And indeed it has, serving as a new alternative to the wild ride that is Twitter. Initial impressions based on screenshots painted a picture of an odd mix of both Instagram and Twitter, and surprisingly, that reductive description has ended up being pretty accurate.
Even while putting them side by side, the UI of both look similar, and therefore immediately familiar. Of course, there are subtle differences, like the default font size, which is marginally smaller in Threads. While your mileage may vary, you may find the Threads app icon at the top, indicating the top of the feed, somewhat helpful. The same applies to the way the apps handles threads; some may find the bird app to do it better, some may find that it’s cleaner here.
Naturally, the quality of your home feed depends quite heavily on the number of your Instagram connections who are also on Threads. If you want a curated feed with updates from only people you follow and who follow you, then Twitter, being the incumbent, definitely has the lead. But if you like seeing random goings-on, then they are sort of on par. Speaking of incumbency, the bird app also has more features, like being able to have a header banner, Spaces, search for topics using hashtags, and quite a laundry list of other things.
The only major distinction for now is that Threads is the distinctively cleaner-looking one between the two. And this is simply down to it not having ads. Not yet anyway. But because this is an Instagram app, as the official name reminds us all, that is an eventuality, nevermind all the usual data harvesting that will be used to send you targeted ads sometime down the line.
One last caveat to Threads is that it currently only exists as a mobile app, or at least the most ideal experience with it is. Using the URL threads.net only leads you to a landing page with a QR code to download the app. One way to bypass this is by visiting a specific user profile’s URL, like that of Mark Zuckerberg. From there, you can select the other profiles that you see to visit their own page.
With Threads being less than a day old, one may argue that there’s a lot that can be forgiven. But with the app being this young, expect to see plenty of puns around the name as well, if you to intend to take a dive. And if you do, why not follow us there while you’re at it?
