Meta's Twitter/X rival Threads is opening developer documentation and a sign-up sheet for interested parties as it readies ahead of the public API launch that's currently slated for June. That follows its opening of a developer API to a select few companies in March.
New documentation, that includes current limitations of the API as well as its endpoints among other things, could help developers get cracking with their Threads-connected apps and other integrations using the new social network.
For instance, when you require real-time analytics around posts on Threads, an Insights API allows fetching view counts, like counts, reply counts, repost counts, and quote counts. There is also information available on how to create posts as well as media using the API, pull replies, and a range of troubleshooting tips.
Documentation further indicates that threads accounts are limited to 250 API-publicated posts a day and 1,000 replies-a measure for fighting spam or abusive usage. It also shares the image and video specs for media uploaded with users' posts and notes Threads' text post character counts have a hard limit of 500 characters — longer than old Twitter's 280 characters, but far less than the 25,000 characters X offers to paid subscribers or the now 100,000 characters it permits in articles posted directly to its platform.
It remains to be seen whether Meta will tilt the playing field in favor of some types of apps over others.
Beta testers of Threads API have, for the most part so far, come from social tool makers like Sprinklr, Sprout Social, Social News Desk, Hootsuite and tech news board Techmeme.
Although Threads has begun to integrate with the larger fediverse—the network of interconnected social networking services that includes Mastodon and others—it doesn't appear that this is something that can be enabled or disabled with the API itself; instead, users must still visit their settings in the Threads app in order to publish to the fediverse.
Meta says the new documentation will be updated over time as it gathers feedback from developers. In addition, anyone interested in building with the new API and providing feedback can now request access via a sign-up page — something that could also help Meta track the apps that are preparing to go live alongside the API's public launch.