Facebook launching new Threads ‘conversation’ app to rival Twitter

Facebook owner Meta is launching a new app to rival Twitter this week.

Threads is described as a “text-based conversation app… where communities come together” and is set to go live on Thursday (6 July).

The app, which is now available for pre-order on the Apple App Store, will be linked to Instagram and will allow users to keep the same username, and follow the same accounts they do on the photo-sharing platform.

Photos of the app show a dashboard that looks similar to Twitter and marks the latest chapter in the rivalry between Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October last year.

The description on the App store states: “Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow.

“Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things — or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world.”

It comes after the pair agreed last month to a physical cage fight in a bizarre exchange that went viral on social media, although it is unclear how serious the men are about going ahead with the bout.

Threads is set to be launched just days after Musk announced that TweetDeck is to become the next part of the company that will be limited to users who have paid for verified status.

The application, which allows users to manage multiple feeds and searches, will only be accessible to verified users in 30 days, according to a tweet from Twitter Support on Monday evening (3 July).

A new version of TweetDeck has since been made available with the tweet giving instructions to update. It followed the announcement from Musk two days earlier that Twitter users were being limited to reading 600 posts a day.

He said the limit, which had been introduced “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”, had been increased to 1,000 later on Saturday (1 July).

The restrictions could result in users being locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets. By comparison, verified users – who have paid for a subscription to Twitter Blue or are considered “notable” – can read up to 10,000 posts daily after initially being limited to 6,000.

Several apps that look extremely similar to Twitter have emerged in recent years, including Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Bluesky and Mastodon.

Bluesky claimed to have seen “record” traffic after Musk restricted usage on Twitter over the weekend, while Mastodon has also grown in popularity since the billionaire bought the social media site for more than £34bn last year.