Introducing Threads: A New Way to Share With Text | Meta (original) (raw)

Update on June 25, 2024 at 10:05AM PT:

Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Threads is taking another step towards adopting open standards and becoming interoperable with the fediverse.

Starting today, Threads users who turn on sharing to the fediverse can see and like replies from people on other servers, like Mastodon, directly in Threads. We are also expanding the availability of the fediverse beta experience to more than 100 countries and hope to roll it out everywhere soon.

To turn on sharing to the fediverse, go to your Account Settings, tap on Fediverse sharing (Beta) and follow the instructions. Sharing to the fediverse is available to Threads users ages 18 and up with public profiles. Visit our new Fediverse Guide in the Privacy Center, our Help Center and the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy to learn more about Threads and the fediverse.

Update on May 30, 2024 at 10:05AM PT:

We recently started testing a new web experience for Threads that you can customize to easily find relevant content and share throughout the day. Today, we are making it available to everyone. You can keep things simple with a single column, or add separate columns for your favorite searches, accounts, saved posts, notifications and more. You can also turn on auto-update to see new content appear in real-time. We will continue listening to your feedback to make threads.net even more useful.

Update on April 2, 2024 at 5:00AM PT:

Our fact-checking program is now live on Threads. Fact-checking partners now have the ability to review and rate misinformation on Threads directly.

Update on March 21, 2024 at 11:00AM PT:

Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Threads is taking the next step towards becoming interoperable with the fediverse. Beginning today, people ages 18 and up with public Threads profiles can turn on sharing to the fediverse as part of our beta experience. We’re testing this in a few countries to start, including the US.

The fediverse is an open, decentralized social media network that lets people connect and share information across independent servers built on the ActivityPub protocol. If you opt into the fediverse beta experience on Threads, people on other servers will be able to search for and follow your Threads profile, view and interact with your posts, and share your posts with anyone on or off their server. While likes from the fediverse will be aggregated on Threads, you won’t be able to see replies or follows from the fediverse in Threads. At this time, polls and posts with reply controls cannot be shared to the fediverse.

If you are a user on another server in the fediverse that communicates with Threads, you can follow Threads users who share to the fediverse and interact with their content. Your server will share information with Threads – for example, if you like posts from Threads users on another server, that information will be shared with Threads.

To turn on sharing to the fediverse, go to your Account Settings, tap on Fediverse sharing (Beta) and follow the instructions. Visit our Help Center and the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy to learn more about Threads and the fediverse.

Update on March 19, 2024 at 11:00AM PT:

Adding a Trending Section on Threads

Mark Zuckerberg just announced that we are rolling out a Trending Now feature on Threads, to help you find timely topics and join conversations you care about. At this time, the feature is only available in the US. You can find Trending Now on the search page and in your For You feed on Threads.

Our AI systems identify trending topics based on a number of signals including how many posts are made about a given topic, and how many people have engaged with those posts. After the topics are selected, a team of content specialists review the topics to ensure nothing violates our Community Guidelines or Recommendation Guidelines, and that themes are not duplicative, nonsensical, or misleading. We will show up to five topics that are trending across the US. When you select a topic, you’ll be taken to search results for that topic – and can explore and engage in the conversation more easily.

Update on December 14, 2023 at 3:05AM PT:

Today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that we are expanding Threads to countries across Europe. We’re excited to give more people the opportunity to follow and join the conversations they care about. Since launching Threads in July, we’ve made significant improvements to the app, including a web experience, a Following Feed, the ability to edit a post, search with keywords, tag topics and more.

People in the EU can choose to create a Threads profile that is connected to their Instagram account – which means they get the same experience as everyone else around the world – or use Threads without a profile. People who use Threads without a profile can browse content on Threads, search for accounts, share content via link copying or platform sharing, and report Threads content, but can’t create a post or interact with content.

We’re excited to see more people using Threads and will continue to listen to community feedback to further improve the experience for everyone.

Update on December 12, 2023 at 10:00AM PT:

Fact-Checking on Threads

Early next year, our third-party fact-checking partners will be able to review and rate false content on Threads. Currently, when a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false on Facebook or Instagram, we extend that fact-check rating to near-identical content on Threads, but fact-checkers cannot rate Threads content on its own.

We recently gave Instagram and Facebook users more controls, allowing them to decide how much sensitive or, if they’re in the US, how much fact-checked content they see on each app. Consistent with that approach, we’re also bringing these controls to Threads to give people in the US the ability to choose whether they want to increase, lower or maintain the default level of demotions on fact-checked content in their Feed. If they choose to see less sensitive content on Instagram, that setting will also be applied on Threads.

Update on October 26, 2023 at 12:00PM PT:

We’re adding two new ways to spark conversation on Threads using polls and GIFs.

With polls, you can pose a question with up to four answer choices. The poll will run for 24 hours and you can control who can respond to the poll, the same way you can control who can reply to a post. You have to vote to see current results – and once you vote, you’ll be notified when the poll ends to see the final results and join the conversation.

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We’re also making it easier to share GIFs on Threads. In a new post or reply, select the GIF icon to bring up the GIF library, where you can choose from what’s trending or search for a specific GIF.

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Update on September 7, 2023 at 11:00AM PT:

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that we began testing keyword search on Threads in Australia and New Zealand. Today, we’ll start rolling out keyword search in English and Spanish, in countries where most people post in those languages – such as Argentina, India, Mexico, the UK, and the US – on both mobile and web. We’re working on bringing the feature to other languages and countries as soon as we can. And we’re continuing to listen to your feedback to improve the search experience.

Update on August 22, 2023 at 8:00AM PT:

Mark Zuckerberg just announced that we’re rolling out a web experience for Threads over the coming days. The new logged-in experience for web lets you post a Thread, view your feed, and interact with other people’s Threads. We’re working hard to bring this experience to parity with mobile and will add more functions to the web version in the coming weeks.

Update on August 9, 2023 at 10:00AM PT:

We’ve been working on adding new Threads features as quickly as possible, and Mark Zuckerberg just announced that we’re rolling out three new ones. You can now:

• Share a thread to Instagram DMs
• Use the new mention button to easily mention people in your Thread
• Edit the automatically generated alt-text description of photos and videos before posting

We launched the ability to view posts you’ve liked in your settings and sort your followers by latest first or earliest first.

We also recently added an option for a chronological feed of only people you’re following. So now you can see both: a For you feed that includes a mix of posts from profiles you follow and recommended content, as well as a Following feed that only shows posts from people you follow.

Threads posts are also now automatically translated based on the language they’re written in and the language setting of the person viewing it. If you see a thread in a different language, and your language is available as a translation, you can tap the translation button at the bottom right of the post or reply to see it.

We’ll continue listening to feedback and launching more features that improve people’s experience on Threads.

Originally published on July 5, 2023 at 4:30PM PT:

Mark Zuckerberg just announced the initial version of Threads, an app built by the Instagram team for sharing with text. Whether you’re a creator or a casual poster, Threads offers a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations. We are working toward making Threads compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that we believe can shape the future of the internet.

Instagram is where billions of people around the world connect over photos and videos. Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas. Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests – including the people you follow on Instagram and beyond. And you can use our existing suite of safety and user controls.

Join the Conversation from Instagram

It’s easy to get started with Threads: simply use your Instagram account to log in. Your Instagram username and verification will carry over, with the option to customize your profile specifically for Threads.

Everyone who is under 16 (or under 18 in certain countries) will be defaulted into a private profile when they join Threads. You can choose to follow the same accounts you do on Instagram, and find more people who care about the same things you do. The core accessibility features available on Instagram today, such as screen reader support and AI-generated image descriptions, are also enabled on Threads.

Your feed on Threads includes threads posted by people you follow, and recommended content from new creators you haven’t discovered yet. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length. You can easily share a Threads post to your Instagram story, or share your post as a link on any other platform you choose.

Tune Out the Noise

We built Threads with tools to enable positive, productive conversations. You can control who can mention you or reply to you within Threads. Like on Instagram, you can add hidden words to filter out replies to your threads that contain specific words. You can unfollow, block, restrict or report a profile on Threads by tapping the three-dot menu, and any accounts you’ve blocked on Instagram will automatically be blocked on Threads.

As with all our products, we’re taking safety seriously, and we’ll enforce Instagram’s Community Guidelines on content and interactions in the app. Since 2016 we’ve invested more than $16 billion in building up the teams and technologies needed to protect our users, and we remain focused on advancing our industry-leading integrity efforts and investments to protect our community.

Compatible with Interoperable Networks

Soon, we are planning to make Threads compatible with ActivityPub, the open social networking protocol established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body responsible for the open standards that power the modern web. This would make Threads interoperable with other apps that also support the ActivityPub protocol, such as Mastodon and WordPress – allowing new types of connections that are simply not possible on most social apps today. Other platforms including Tumblr have shared plans to support the ActivityPub protocol in the future.

We’re committed to giving you more control over your audience on Threads – our plan is to work with ActivityPub to provide you the option to stop using Threads and transfer your content to another service. Our vision is that people using compatible apps will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a new era of diverse and interconnected networks. If you have a public profile on Threads, this means your posts would be accessible from other apps, allowing you to reach new people with no added effort. If you have a private profile, you’d be able to approve users on Threads who want to follow you and interact with your content, similar to your experience on Instagram.

The benefits of open social networking protocols go well beyond the ways people can follow each other. Developers can build new types of features and user experiences that can easily plug into other open social networks, accelerating the pace of innovation and experimentation. Each compatible app can set its own community standards and content moderation policies, meaning people have the freedom to choose spaces that align with their values. We believe this decentralized approach, similar to the protocols governing email and the web itself, will play an important role in the future of online platforms.

Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol – we hope that by joining this fast-growing ecosystem of interoperable services, Threads will help people find their community, no matter what app they use.

What’s Next

We’re rolling out Threads today in more than 100 countries for iOS and Android, and people in those countries can download the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

In addition to working toward making Threads compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, soon we’ll be adding a number of new features to help you continue to discover threads and creators you’re interested in, including improved recommendations in feed and a more robust search function that makes it easier to follow topics and trends in real time.

We’re excited to hear your feedback as we work to build new features and introduce fun new ways to connect on the app.