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Meta’s Twitter Competitor, Threads, Is Available Today
The new platform uses your Instagram login and allows 500-character text posts, as well as photos, videos, and links.
Threads, the Twitter competitor created by Facebook and Instagram parent company, Meta, has finally launched after months of rumors and leaks. The platform can be accessed from a desktop site at Threads.net or via iOS and Android apps.
Threads allows users to create Twitter-style text posts of up to 500 characters plus share photos and videos of up to five minutes as well as links. The app looks much like Twitter, including a minimal interface with options to like, comment, repost, and share content. Because Threads is closely linked to Instagram, users can log in with their existing credentials and easily follow the same people from that platform.
The main feed on Threads features recommended content and posts from followed profiles, while a filter system allows users to block out certain words and limit who can reply to their threads.
Meta has decided not to add Threads support for ActivityPub right now. The decentralized social networking protocol — used by Mastodon and others — would allow the transfer of information from Threads to other hosts, among other functions.
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“We believe this decentralized approach, similar to the protocols governing email and the web itself, will play an important role in the future of online platforms,” Meta explained. “Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol — we hope that by joining this fast-growing ecosystem of interoperable services, Threads will help people find their community, no matter what app they use”.
The launch of Threads comes as Twitter users experience yet more drama. Elon Musk recently imposed a temporary rate limit for unverified users, limiting them to 600 daily post views. At one point, Twitter also blocked logged-out users from viewing tweets entirely before subtly reversing the decision shortly afterwards.
As for Threads, the app is available in over 100 countries — including the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia — and has already been downloaded over 5 million times. Notably, the platform won’t be available in the European Union due to the complexities of complying with the region’s strict data protection regulations.
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At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value
Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.
Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.
The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.
Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.
The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.
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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.
What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.
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