In 2023, Threads was launched as a stand-alone app, but Meta’s original plan was to go above and beyond.
Social media has become so unexpectedly intertwined with our daily lives that the lines have blurred. In this attention-deficit economy, the little amount of concentration we hold is directed to these apps – communication is continuous and never-ending.
Think about Twitter (now called X) and its millions of users. Not even for a moment do the thousands of conversations come to a halt. And it works both as a bane and a boon.
While social media could be a really engaging and conversational channel, it also has a downside – interactions full of misinformation and hatred. This is something many believe X has turned into.
But Meta wished to do things differently. The initial purpose was to:
“Build the most engaging online space for public conversation, enabling people to talk about their interests, come together over cultural moments, and connect directly with creators.”
The tech powerhouse launched Threads with one hope – to make posting “fresh and fun.” In the given deck, the platform was to be linked to Instagram, and users could use the same login credentials for Threads.
Threads would work as an extension of Instagram, leveraging innovative features such as the Mastodon integration. The text-based platform was planned as a new avenue for Instagram creators to share non-political pieces different from those on X.
Most of the features outlined in the internal deck have actually come to fruition, such as joining the decentralized fediverse and the archive post option. But it’s still missing one – native-to-Threads DMs. Now that the internal deck has become public in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial against Meta, only time will tell. The future direction of Meta’s platform remains unclear.