Threads arrives in Europe. And in Italy. Mark Zuckerberg announced it on his social channels. Threads – the anti-Twitter social network, as it has been renamed – is an app created by the Instagram team to share text messages and participate in public conversations. Launched last July on the US and British markets, Threads now lands in Europe and its approximately 400 million citizens who use social networks. Since its launch to date, Threads has seen its users grow to 141 million. Twitter (now X.com) has about 400 million. The arrival in Europe will give a more concrete measure of the real potential of the platform.
Agreement reached with Europe: Threads now respects EU laws
The landing in Europe was blocked last July by the Irish Privacy Guarantor. Reason? Meta (Mark Zuckerberg’s holding company, which controls Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp) had not provided regulators with the requirements for publishing the app on the stores. Among these, the main obstacle for the guarantor was the use of users’ personal data, which would have to move from Instagram (Threads is linked to the Instagram account) to the new platform. Passage not permitted by European laws. Meta got out of the bind by giving users the opportunity to register via Instagram or to have free access to the platform without an account, but without being able to interact with the contents. “There was a significant lack of clarity on regulatory developments in Europe on a number of issues,” a company spokesperson said. “It was important for us to take the time to understand the regulatory landscape and invest in conversations with EU regulators. We are now ready to bring Threads to Europe and believe it complies with current regulations. We will continue to engage with regulators as the regulatory landscape evolves,” she added.
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As did
Threads is a microblogging platform, where you can post messages of up to 500 characters, links, photos, videos of up to 5 minutes. The app’s main feed shows posts (called “threads”) from the accounts you follow, along with accounts recommended by the algorithm. You can repost a thread as-is or by adding a comment, and replies are featured prominently in the main feed.
For a few days there have also been hashtags (they are called Tags and you can only use one per post), it is possible to edit threads even after publication, and you can search with keywords. Threads can also be accessed via the web, as well as with the app (for Android and iOS). Private messages are still missing, but on the other hand it is easy to share threads on other platforms. And those who had the blue check on Instagram will also have it on Threads if they choose to use the same account.
Too similar
“We are gravely concerned that Meta has engaged in a systematic, intentional, and unlawful appropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property,” Elon Musk’s lawyers wrote to Zuckerberg shortly after the launch of Threads. Underlining that “dozens of former Twitter employees have been hired by Meta in the last year”: precisely to complete Threads in a few months, which lawyers define as a “copy” of Twitter. The official response immediately came: “None of the Threads engineering team are former Twitter employees. It simply doesn’t exist.” Meanwhile, between malfunctions, hate speech, fake users who pass themselves off as real because 8 dollars is enough to get the blue check, Twitter today is a very different place from the platform for freedom of expression that Musk promised when purchased it for 44 billion dollars on October 27, 2022. The impression remains that he is working not to improve the user experience of the very few subscribers, but to worsen that of the many free users. Thus Zuckerberg could succeed where other social networks such as Hive, Bluesky and Mastodon have failed. Indeed, a collaboration could open up with Mastodon, since both platforms are interoperable and based on a decentralized structure: just recently.
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Primo round
In addition to the affinities between the two social networks, divergences are beginning to emerge. If Twitter is very popular among footballers and politicians, Threads is more democratic and has a more varied user base. For content, Twitter focuses heavily on news, gaining media consideration, which is decidedly disproportionate to the user base. On Threads, newspapers and websites are multiplying quickly, as are small and large brands and companies: the advertising and e-commerce solutions for shops are already ready, you just need to adapt them to the new platform. “Our approach will be the same as with all other products: first make it work well, then see if we can get it to a billion people and only then think about monetization,” Zuckerberg said at the launch. And today, with the European launch, Threads takes another step towards this goal.