Meta has finally launched its brand new app Threads, which has been described as a “friendly” rival to X (formerly Twitter), in Europe.
Threads is a “text-based conversation app” where users are able to publish posts up to 500 characters long, and include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long.Â
Similar to Twitter, posts can be replied to, liked or shared by others.
Threads is laid out in a similar way to X; however, some of the wording has been adjusted.
Retweets are called “reposts” and tweets are called “threads”.
Users can unfollow, block, restrict or report others, while also being able to filter out certain words.
Threads is directly linked to Instagram, Meta’s popular photo-sharing platform with more than 2bn users, and has been rolled out in more than 100 countries for iOS and Android.
While Threads launched in the likes of the US & the UK back in July, its European debut was delayed due to strict privacy laws in the region.
Before launching in the EU, Meta first needed to seek approval from the European Commission over the app’s privacy provisions.
The new Meta platform comes amid a major decline in users on X, otherwise known as Twitter.
The app has lost several of its top advertisers and seen a massive decrease in popularity since Elon Musk took over as CEO in 2022, and implemented a number of controversial changes.
