Meta’s new Twitter-busting Threads app is now active, and we’re getting more details by the minute as to how the app looks and functions, while the Instagram team has also shared some insights into what features will be coming soon to the new platform.

And it looks good. The layout of Threads is clean and simple, with all of the basic functionality of the Twitter feed.
Logically, Meta would want to reproduce the Twitter experience in the new app. And earlier today, some users got early access to the in-app experience - that is, the features that really enable me to dig around features in the new app.
 
Here's what I found:

First off, in terms of functionality - Threads posts can be up to 500 characters long, and may include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes long.

Also like Twitter, Threads are presented in the main feed with an awful lot of recommended content to begin with, and you can like, re-post, and reply to each update.

And while Threads has been designed on a decentralized protocol, to make it work and to give users greater portability and control of their data, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri claims that it won't be fully functional in this respect at launch .

But it does include this explainer, as to what the intention is in this respect :
So soon, everyone will have a threads.net username, discoverable across other apps that use ActivityPub, including social platforms like Mastodon. This should, theoretically, mean even more freedom to make use of your own in-app information and to bring that audience over to other conversations, other apps and digital places.

The greater fediverse, however, with thousands of federated servers working together to facilitate a new form of open social media access, is not exactly fond of Meta's looking to muscle onto its turf, "with a collective of fediverse mods seeking to keep Meta's products out of the space".

Which goes pretty much against the entire model-but essentially, this new wave of open platforms isn't really feeling the love with the big players, such as Meta, milking them for the hay they can get from it, since Meta and Co. are the ones who created the problems that led to the fediverse in the first place.

Either way, that's reportedly coming, once Meta can work out all the complexities involved in facilitating such connection.

In terms of extended functionality, Threads allows easy switching between light and dark mode, achieved through tapping on the Threads icon at the top of the screen (thanks to Morgan Evetts for sharing this example).
Mosseri also claims that voice notes are coming to the app, along with photo and video tagging, while they're also considering post reactions, though that may clutter the UI, which is something that Meta wants to avoid.
In terms of ranking of posts, Mosseri says there is an algorithm that 'lightly' ranks posts for now, they're also looking to highlight recommendations from accounts you do not follow in your Threads feed as means to kick off engagement.

So, more like the AI-driven discovery approach that’s now become popular in other apps, though I’d expect Meta to either dial this back at some point, or offer alternative ‘Following’ and ‘Recommended’ feeds, much like Twitter’s current UI.

Worth noting too is that hashtags, for now at least, are not live on Threads, though they may be sometime soon; meanwhile Meta's weighing how exactly it should refer to posts as in the app. For example, re-posts will likely be called 're-threads', though nothing is set in stone yet.

Controls-wise, at launch, users will be able to limit replies on each post to profiles that you follow or only those mentioned in the thread. Or, of course, public, open free-for-all. Instagram's also bringing over a lot of the accessibility and interaction controls from its core app, so you can expect there to be a range of tools to manage your Threads experience.
The app looks good, looks polished, it seems like a good space, though missing some functionality that Meta will no doubt add in over time (it's still very early, and Meta's only just getting started with the new app).

So will it be the Twitter killer?

Look, of all the Twitter challengers that have cropped up so far, it definitely looks the best, while tapping into the social graph of Instagram will give it a huge boost in introducing the app to a whole new range of potential users.

Worth mentioning here is that it is that Twitter currently has about 250 million daily actives, while Instagram houses more than a billion. That's a lot of non-Twitter users who could be lured across to this new app and enjoy potentially significant growth momentum, which may eventually make it a viable alternative to Twitter at the very least.

And if Twitter users, primarily those popular ones, lose the will to support Musk's alterations or initiatives, that itself would probably be enough to spur heavy adoption.

In any case, things are about to get very interesting in the real-time social race.