The new Twitter competitor app, “Threads, an Instagram App” was launched on July 6, Thursday.
READ: Zuckerberg-Musk fight’s first round: Meta launches ‘Twitter Killer’ Threads app
In light of the launch of Threads, here are a few features that differentiate and similarize Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads from Elon Musk’s Twitter:
Character limits
Twitter has a 280-character limit for each tweet unless you are subscribed to Twitter Blue which allows 25,000 character limit and tweets to be edited within 1 hour after posting. For Threads, the character limit for each post is 500 and posts cannot be edited. Both apps reserve two character spaces for emojis.
Other limitations
Both apps allow users to choose to limit who can comment on their posts. Only Twitter, however, enables a user to save tweets as drafts for later posting. Drafting posts in Threads is unavailable. Additionally, Threads does not have the bookmarking function that Twitter has.
While Twitter allows only four pieces of media per tweet, Threads allow ten pieces of media to be posted, just like Instagram. Twitter media is presented in a grid, while Threads media is presented as a gallery that can be scrolled horizontally.
Direct messages
For some people, if not most, the people they talk to on their social media platforms alter their experience in the app. In Threads, there is no direct messages panel. Though this is because it’s an app that is tied to Instagram, direct messages for these two apps might be considered as one.
Timeline
The timeline or online feed is where social media apps bring you whenever you open them. On Twitter, users can choose what they want to see in their timeline — whether they want to see the popular tweets, or the latest tweets from people they follow, and even have multiple timelines using the ‘pinned lists’ function.
On the opposite side, what you see on the Threads timeline is decided by the algorithm; much similar to the “For You” timeline of Twitter.
Profile
Threads profile looks very much like an Instagram profile, except that instead of pictures being shown in grids, posts are shown like tweets. There is no panel under the Threads profile that shows the user’s liked posts, and posts that have media included. Users could also easily switch to Instagram through their Threads profile.
Search
Moving on to the search panel of these two apps, the search panel on Twitter shows real-time and customizable trending topics while the search panel of Threads only shows popular users to follow. This is also different from the search panel of Instagram which shows similar posts based on your likes.
Notifications
The notifications panel of Threads and Twitter are slightly similar. On Twitter, the notifications panel shows the tweets you were mentioned in, and interactions with your tweets, and has a separate panel for notifications that come from verified users.
On the other hand, the Threads notifications panel shows follow requests (if your account is private), and post interactions with replies and mentions in a separate sub-panel.
As of this writing, posting on Threads takes some time, especially if the post contains multiple media. In the end, the quality of Twitter and Threads still depends on the user’s preference.