Meta’s competitor to X (formerly known as Twitter) – Threads – is making news in two areas: being able to work with other apps and expanding into Europe. In a surprisiong move, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said Threads posts could be shared on Mastodon and other ActivityPub-enabled platforms as part of a test. This is a big step towards integration, which has been one of the main ideas behind the fediverse, a decentralised network of social media services, from the beginning.
What does Integration with ActivityPub mean, and why is it good? With ActivityPub, you can choose where your content is seen and how people connect with it, unlike on traditional social media sites where you are limited to your home feed. It will also help you reach more people. Allowing you to gain new followers and take part in conversations in other groups. It also helps make social media more open and democratic by lowering the need for centralised sites like Meta.
This movement indicates that Meta remains committed to making all their services work together. This fits what Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, who thinks decentralisation is the key to getting the next wave of creators to join, has said.
In addition, Threads is finally getting ready to land in Europe simultaneously. The platform will finally go live on December 14th after being delayed because of regulatory issues.
Threads is also adding “Tags” that work like Instagram Hashtags, but is less confusing or complicated. Tags can only be used once per post. This is meant to get people to talk about more specific topics and keep material at a managable level. Users can add tags by typing “#” or clicking a post UI button. Furthermore, Tags, unlike Instagram, don’t need to be added directly below the post with multiple hashtags, which can be confusing. Instead, it’s directly added to the post or words similar to a hyperlink. The chosen words will turn blue in the post, meaning it has been tagged with the specific topic or genre, or you can make a new one. This gives users more freedom and simplifies how they can add specific topics and genres to their posts to reach out to others looking for posts in their interest.
