Thread-y Or Not: Meta's "Twitter Killer" Is Here

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Hello Friday, we meet again! Gotta love a short week.

Several parts of the country are not going to be getting much relief from the heat for the next few days, so we thought we’d include some signs that you or your children are dehydrated, and the fastest ways to get hydrated.

Cheers! Have a good weekend,

Mosheh, Jill, & Courtney

🗞 THREADS vs. TWITTER: ONE DAY IN

In less than 24 hours, Instagram’s Threads app already had more than 30 million users. That includes celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and Tom Brady, at least according to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and now, Threads.

WHAT IS THREADS?
It’s basically Meta’s answer to Twitter: a text-based social media platform. And it lets users sign up straight from their Instagram accounts with the same user name and same followers. And it comes at a strategic time with Twitter’s reputation struggling with advertisers and users.

About 2 billion people already use Instagram every single month, giving Threads a major leg up on other Twitter competitors like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Truth Social, which never went mainstream.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
Here’s Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri describing Threads and what’s in store for the platform:

HOW IT WORKS 
In order to use Threads, you need an Instagram account. And for now, the only way to completely delete your Threads account is to also delete your Instagram account— something that’s not sitting well with everyone.

• Mosseri later tried to clarify that users can deactivate their Threads account to hide their profile and content and can delete all their individual posts, without deleting their Instagram account. But because Threads and Instagram are all one account, deleting one would delete the other. He says the company is “looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately.”

THREADS V. TWITTER
There are tons of similarities between Threads and Twitter, but here are some of the differences:

• A post or thread can have 500 characters, a bit more than Twitter.

• Unlike Twitter, Threads does not currently have direct messaging between users.

• Threads is available in 100 countries, but notably not the European Union because of privacy concerns.

• Threads has no ads— yet!

• On Threads, there’s no limit to how many posts you can read a day. Under Elon Musk, Twitter recently limited the number of tweets someone could read to 600 a day for unverified accounts and 6,000 a day for those paying a monthly subscription fee.

• Unlike Twitter, you cannot pay for a blue check mark or verification on Threads. So if an account is verified on Instagram, which means the company has verified it belongs to a public person or brand, then it will be verified on Threads.

AND YET, IT’S SIMILAR ENOUGH…
…that Twitter is threatening legal action against Meta, accusing it of poaching former employees to create a “copycat” app.

• On Thursday, a lawyer for Twitter sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of engaging in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”

  • Meta tells Semafor that “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Meta is rolling out Threads just months after Elon Musk purchased Twitter and has made a number of changes to well, pretty mixed reviews. 

To that end, Mosseri tells the NY Times: “There was an opportunity or demand for more people to play in the public space… not just because of the ownership, but because of product changes and decisions” that had been made to Twitter under Musk.

Linda Yaccarino, the new Musk-appointed CEO of Twitter, responded Thursday that “we’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”

Notably, Meta was considering launching Threads as a feature within Instagram, but after a “contentious debate,” it decided to launch a standalone app.

⏳ SPEED READ

🚨NATION

📌 First Alzheimer's drug to slow disease, Leqembi, gets full FDA approval (CBS NEWS)

📌 Former U.S. officials have held secret Ukraine talks with prominent Russians. The aim is to lay the groundwork for potential negotiations to end the war. (NBC NEWS)

📌 PFAS 'Forever chemicals' could be in nearly half of U.S. tap water, a federal study finds (NPR)

🌎 AROUND THE WORLD

📌 Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has returned to Russia, two weeks after insurrection (THE GUARDIAN)

📌 English tourist filmed carving into Rome's Colosseum claims ignorance on importance of site (USA TODAY)

📌 ‘Literally off the charts’: Canada’s fire season sets records — and is far from over. Officials say the risk will remain high through summer thanks to drought and above-normal temperatures.(POLITICO)

📌 Recent events indicate Earth’s climate has entered uncharted territory (AP NEWS)

💵 BUSINESS & TECH

📌 The ‘Great Resignation’ is over. Can workers’ power endure? (NY TIMES)

📌 Tech layoffs disproportionately impacted women (AXIOS)

📌 Good News/Bad News: US Job market shows fresh strength with ADP and Layoff Data (BLOOMBERG)

🎥 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT

📌 No. 1-overall NBA pick Victor Wembanyama addresses Britney Spears slap incident: ‘She grabbed me'. (NY POST)

📌 The Eagles Announce ‘Final’ Tour Dates: ‘This Is Our Swan Song’. (CNN)

📌 Barbie Movie Map: Warner Bros. explains drawing that got film banned in Vietnam (VARIETY)

🎉 CHEERS TO THE FREAKIN’ WEEKEND

• What We’re Watching: Jill: Hijack on Apple TV; Mosheh: Arnold on Netflix

• What We’re Reading: Jill: Here’s When We Hit Our Physical and Mental Peaks ~WSJ; Mosheh: A Radical Idea for Fixing Polarization, Can proportional representation save American democracy? ~The Atlantic

• What We’re Eating: Jill: Zingerman’s Deli  Mosheh: Alec’s Ice Cream