Billionaire Mark Zukerberg’s Meta group, on Wednesday unveiled their new app aimed at rivaling Elon Musk’s owned social media platform, Twitter.
The new app called ‘Threads’, is a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
The app went live just after midnight Wednesday in the U.K. in Apple and Google Android app stores in more than 100 countries including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan.
Threads has buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a “thread,” and counters showing the number of likes and replies that a post has received.
“Our vision is that Threads will be a new app more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photo and video,” the company said.
Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter’s 280-character threshold, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.
Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.
Meta emphasized measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram’s community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users.
Influential Nigerians including President Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, and Tony Elumelu, have reportedly joined the micro-blogging app which has recorded over 30 million participants in 12 hours.
