People who are unhappy with the way businessman Elon Musk has been running Twitter now have a new social media service to consider. Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, launched an app called Threads late Wednesday. The app is being called a text version of Instagram, a service mainly for sharing photos and videos. Meta said it will be a place for “real-time updates and public conversations.” Some users say it looks similar to Twitter. It is mostly text but permits users to link to their Instagram accounts and to post photos and short videos. Messages can be 500 characters, which is nearly two times longer than Twitter’s 280. People who already have an account with Instagram will be able to import the people they follow into the Threads app. Meta’s leader, Mark Zuckerberg, said 10 million people signed up in the first seven hours.
