Meta’s Twitter rival to hit app store this week

Mark Zuckerberg’s competitor to Elon Musk’s Twitter social media platform has arrived on the Apple App Store and will be available for download Thursday.

Users of Threads, Instagram’s new social media platform, will be able to post, repost and like content, similar to Twitter, based on screenshots of the upcoming app. Users also will be able to limit who can and cannot see and interact with their posts.

Users won’t have to start from scratch, as Threads will import users’ Instagram followers. So users will have communities ready for their interactions as soon as they download the app.

While connected to Instagram, Threads will be a standalone app.

Rumors of a competitor to Twitter have been circling for months. Mr. Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, which owns Instagram as well as Facebook and WhatsApp, has made private jabs at Twitter’s current state. Previously, Mr. Zuckerberg said users are looking for a more stable version of Twitter after the company was plagued with issues following Mr. Musk’s acquisition of the company last year.

When Twitter over the weekend placed temporary daily limits on how many posts users can see, competitor apps exploded in popularity. Apps such as Mastodon and BlueSky, which have been siphoning off Twitter users since Mr. Musk took over, saw big increases in users.

However, Twitter’s hold on its corner of the social media landscape might be stronger than Meta thinks. Users might not want to migrate to another Meta-owned social network, especially since Instagram and Facebook already make up a large chunk of mainstream users’ experiences.

Mr. Musk, for his part, has parroted this concern. When rumors about Threads reached a fever pitch last month, Mr. Musk challenged Mr. Zuckerberg to a cage match.

However, according to Meta, Threads will be “decentralized.” While it is not clear what the company means by decentralized, it is clear company officials are aware of the “Big Brother” image Meta has garnered over the past few years and are attempting to circumvent it.