Initially announced Thursday on the application stores, the debut of the new creation of Meta was brought forward to Wednesday 23:00 GMT, according to the site to which Instagram refers.
"Instagram's Written Conversations App." That's the description of Threads on the Apple Store, with a presentation that seems close to that of Twitter, according to the visuals.
The launch of Threads comes just four months after the first echoes of the project leaked.
Meta has not formally communicated on the beginnings of this new platform, which comes just a few days after a new adventure at Twitter, whose social network emerges weakened.
On Saturday, the main shareholder Elon Musk announced the implementation, officially on a provisional basis, of a limit on the number of messages that can be consulted per account and per day, which has taken back users, advertisers and developers.
A decision that comes after several others unwelcome since the takeover of the billionaire, including the transformation into a paid service of the verification of an account or the dismissal of almost all content moderation teams.
On Monday, Twitter also announced that the TweetDeck dashboard, very popular among active users, would soon only be accessible to verified accounts, therefore paid.
"The timing is very good for Meta," said Jonathan Taplin, author of two books on tech giants, including "The End of Reality," to be published in September. "There are loads of people who have an almost religious resistance to anything to do with Elon Musk."
For him, Threads represents an existential threat to Twitter.
Launch pad
The immediate impact of this launch could be limited, however, by the fact that Meta chose to wait before offering Threads to residents of the European Union.
The giant wants to give itself time to clarify the consequences for the company and its products of the new regulation of digital markets (DMA), which came into force in early May, according to a source close to the file.
The DMA aims to impose specific rules on Internet companies, including Meta, to avoid anti-competitive practices.
The group in Menlo Park, California, nevertheless intends to eventually launch Threads in the European Union, at a date yet to be defined, said the source.
Asked by AFP, Meta did not respond immediately.
Meta makes no secret of the synergies he intends to rely on to rapidly grow his newborn, presenting him from the outset as an emanation of Instagram.
The latter "is the most successful product of the Meta family," says Pinar Yildirim, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "They couldn't associate this new product with Facebook, because this name doesn't make anyone dream anymore."
With more than two billion active users, Instagram offers Threads a launching pad that could not have dreamed of small competitors of Twitter, from Mastodon to Bluesky, through sites popular with ultra-conservatives such as Truth Social, Parler, Gettr or Gab.
"The equation is simple: if an Instagram user with a significant number of followers, like (Kim) Kardashian or (Justin) Bieber or (Lionel) Messi starts posting on Threads regularly, this new platform could grow quickly and I think ad budgets would follow within a tight timeframe," analyst Brian Wieser wrote on Substack.
This prospect is potentially all the more worrying for Twitter as the San Francisco group has seen its advertising revenue melt since the arrival of Elon Musk at its head.
An exodus that has not yet managed to stop the new general manager, Linda Yaccarino, arrived a month ago at Twitter but very silent so far.
© 2023 AFP