Meta Platforms:Instagram Threads

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Developments

December 2023

December 14, 2023: Meta Platforms today launched Threads in Europe as was recently announced by the Wall Street Journal. European users can choose to create a Threads Profile that is connected to the Instagram account or browse Threads content without an account but can’t interact with the content or create one. Since Threads was launched in July, it has made several improvements such as adding a Following Feed, the ability to edit a post, search with keywords, tag topics, etc.

November 2023

November 30, 2023: Meta Platforms plans to bring Threads in Europe by the end of December, WSJ cited people familiar with the matter. However, to comply with EU regulations, the company will give users the choice of using the app purely for consumption, without creating profiles. Debra Aho Williamson, an independent tech analyst, estimates that the move could add 40 new monthly users to the app in 2024. According to Sensor Tower, an analytics firm, Threads currently has 73 million monthly global users.

November 13, 2023: Threads will now allow users to disable automatic sharing of their threads to Facebook and Instagram. Sharing of threads to other apps was widely criticised by users. The new feature has not been officially announced by the Threads team yet, but a user has seen it.

September 2023

September 26, 2023: According to Michel Protti, Meta’s chief privacy officer for products, Meta is planning to launch an account deletion feature for Threads by December. “Technically, it was extremely challenging to allow deletion of a separate Threads account without also deleting your overall Instagram account out of the gate. So we paid particular attention to ensuring the user could still exercise their deletion rights, by deactivating the account to sort of hide all content, setting it to private or deleting individual threads,” he said. Protti also said that they are working on integrating the app with fediverse, a decentralized social network.

September 26, 2023: Insider Intelligence forecasts that Threads will have 23.7 million U.S. users by the end of 2023, far below X (56.1 million users). It will also rank below Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, which will have 177.9 million, 135.2 million, and 102.3 million, respectively by the end of 2023. However, by 2025, Threads users will increase to 30 million while X users will drop to 47 million. “Threads received an initial boost from Twitter’s missteps, but it can’t rely on X defectors to continue to grow,” Jasmine Enberg, Insider Intelligence’s principal analyst said in a statement.

August 2023

August 21, 2023: According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta Platforms will launch a web version of Threads early this week. Already, users can see web posts of Threads but their access is limited since the app is mostly intended for mobile phones. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram said last week that the web version is already being tested internally and that it will launch soon. According to people familiar with it, the launch is expected this week though the launch plans aren't final. “It’s a little bit buggy right now, you don’t want it just yet,” Mosseri said. “As soon as it is ready we will share it with everybody else.” The search feature could help Threads reach more users after time spent on it declined sharply. According to SimilarWeb, time spent on Threads has dropped 85% since its launch. According to the data analytics firm, Threads now has less than 10 million users, down from 50 million it attracted a few days after its launch.

August 9, 2023: CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Threads will bring three new features in the coming weeks. The features include the ability to share a Thread post in your Instagram DM, a way to add alt text to photos or videos and a mention button that enables you to mention someone's account in your Thread post.

August 4, 2023: In the coming weeks, Instagram will add web and search features to its Threads app. "A good week for Threads. The community here is on the trajectory I expect to build a vibrant long-term app. Lots of work ahead but excited about the team's pace of shipping. Search and web coming in the next few weeks," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post.

July 2023

July 28, 2023: According to Reuters, Meta executives plan new retention features for its Threads app after it lost more than half of its users weeks after its launch. "Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in a town hall meeting. Zuckerberg said the drop in retention is "normal" and expects it to grow once the company adds desktop version and search functionality. Meta declined to comment on the meeting notes.

July 25, 2023: Instagram's Threads launched a "following" tab, which allows users to see chronological posts from people they follow instead of the algorithmically curated content that appears in the "For you" feed. “Ask and you shall receive,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post. The "Following" and "For you" taps look similar to the Twitter layout. Threads also added an update that enables users to sort their "Activity" feed by quotes, reposts and follows. The update will also enable users to translate certain posts that appear in a different language as well as see their liked posts in the settings.

July 18, 2023: Threads starts implementing rate limits to wade off bots. “Spam attacks have picked up so we’re going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives),” Instagram head, Adam Mosseri, posted on Threads. “If you get caught up those protections let us know.” Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he is optimistic on Threads engagement. “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily. That’s way ahead of what we expected,” Zuckerberg said. “The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention. It’ll take time to stabilize, but once we nail that, then we’ll focus on growing the community. We’ve run this playbook many times (FB, IG, Stories, Reels, etc) and I’m confident Threads is on a good path too," he added.

July 11, 2023: Instagram plans to bring its branded content tools to Threads, acording to people familiar with it. These tools will enable marketers to work with influencers on paid partnerships on Threads. The news come after Threads achieved 100 million users in five days. Meta has not responded to Reuters' request for a comment on the news. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said that they will only think about monetizing Threads once there is a clear path towards achieving a billion users. Despite its appeal to companies, Threads still lack hashtags and keyword search function.

July 6, 2023: Threads passed 10 million sign ups within 7 hours of launch. According to Techcrunch, the only downside of Threads as compared to Twitter is the possibility that it will have algorithmic junk. Threads doesn’t currently support ActivityPub, a protocall that supports posts on decentralized networks such as Mastodon but Meta has promised to avail it soon. "We’re committed to building support for ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon, into this app. We weren’t able to finish it for launch given a number of complications that come along with a decentralized network, but it’s coming,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said. “If you’re wondering why this matters, here’s a reason: you may one day end up leaving Threads, or, hopefully not, end up de-platformed. If that ever happens, you should be able to take your audience with you to another server. Being open can enable that," he noted.

July 4, 2023: Instagram is expected to launch its Twitter-like app on Thursday. According to a listing on Apple Inc.’s App Store, the app, called Threads will allow users to make posts that can be liked, commented on or shared. Users will also be able to follow accounts that they follow on Instagram. Additionally, they will be able to use the same username that they use in Instagram. On Apple App Store, the Threads has been described as “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today, to what’ll be trending tomorrow.” The app is already available for "pre-order". By launching this app, Meta aims to take advantages of problems facing Twitter such as poor content moderation policies, account subscription fees and reliability issues such as the recent decision by Twitter to limit the number of posts that one can see. Meta platforms has, however, refused to comment on the speculations.