Instagram is launching a new social media platform called Instagram Threads. The new network competes with Twitter and aims to be more fun and better, including being less politically charged.
Megan van der Wagt and Rob Coenraads
Threads is a new app from Instagram, which, like Facebook and Whtasapp, is part of parent company Meta. After months of waiting, the app has also been available in the Netherlands and Belgium since Thursday afternoon, December 14. The app was previously released in several regions such as the United Kingdom and Canada, but privacy laws prevented the app from appearing in the EU earlier.
What is Threads?
Threads is very similar to X, the former Twitter. The app looks the same as X and you can do practically the same things with it. You use the same username as your Instagram account and you can add ‘status updates’. These Threads may have a maximum length of 500 characters, while X may only have a maximum length of 280 characters. You can supplement this with photos, links or videos, but a video can be a maximum of 5 minutes long. It is also possible to share Threads posts on Instagram itself, as a story.
The app came online on Thursday for iOS users in the App Store and is now also available in Google’s Play Store for Android users.
Threads better and more fun than X?
Threads wants to compete with X, the former Twitter. After Elon Musk took over Twitter, he made some drastic changes, such as changing the name and adding affordable verification checks. There are also controversial X users that Musk allows and Musk recently made the news when he recently responded to an anti-Semitic post on He wrote the comment “You speak the truth”. Partly because of this, major advertisers such as IBM, Apple and Oracle no longer want to advertise on
With Threads, Instagram wants to offer a nicer, better and less politically charged (via algorithms) social media platform. Although there have been more so-called Twitter killers such as Mastodon in recent years, no alternative has come close to Twitter or to be a good alternative to dethrone X.
