And it’s living up to expectations

It’s been a huge week in the online world, with the launch of Threads. This has made me feel like my last newsletter to you was a month ago, not last week.

If you haven’t heard about Threads, it’s similar to Twitter, but part of Instagram.

You need an Instagram account to have a Threads account, but they are separate apps.

It feels a lot like Twitter, and has pulled a lot of people who prefer Twitter to Instagram over to check it out, myself included. And so far I’m really enjoying it.

Everyone is starting out their Threads journey together. So while there are people who have huge followings already (you can pull in your followers from Instagram, and people from other social media platforms have been promoting their Threads accounts), everyone is learning how it works at the same time.

There are a few things that are annoying, until you follow and start interacting with accounts you like you will get random/what the algorithm thinks you’ll like based on what everyone else is interacting with. This means to begin with you will see a lot of accounts you have less than no interest in.

There also isn’t a following feed yet. So even when you start following a number of accounts, you can go to a dedicated feed to see their content.

I am hoping this will change, as the development team has said there are more features coming.

There are no hashtags at the moment. I am unsure if that’s good or bad yet (but it also may change).

The search isn’t hugely functional yet. If you search for a word or phrase, like ‘build in public’, it will only search names and usernames. Not bios or posts. 

Writing threads is a lot easier than on Twitter (unsurprisingly). On Twitter, you really need to plan your thread first. Then write and post each individually under the one before.

On Threads, you can draft the individual posts altogether. You’re able to delete sections easily if you want to take one out, and when you’re done, pressing ‘post’ posts them all at once.

It seems images aren’t compressed at all, I don’t know if that will change in the future, but from an artist/photographer’s point of view, it’s currently great seeing images how they’re made to be seen.

When you post multiple images they run side by side and you have to swipe to scroll through them all. 

This could lead to some fun imagery planning for your posts.

If you’re on Threads and would like to follow me and see how I’m experimenting with using it, I’m there as joy.storyof100