Reviewing the Threads App
Hello and welcome! I’m sure we all have seen some of the craziness happening around Twitter lately. This has led to numerous apps popping up claiming to be “Twitter Killers”, but are they really?
I recently reviewed the new Threads app, which was designed by Meta to connect directly to Instagram, to see what the hype was about. So, let’s see what’s happening.
Intro to the app & onboarding
Right off the bat, I loved the welcome screen for the app. It’s very branded to match Instagram, but still has its own feel. I really liked the typography and modern design to make it feel like it’s current. Also, the fact that I could connect my Instagram to bring in my profile photo, bio, and followers was incredible. It saved me so much time and made me feel connected to people I know right off the bat.
I can tell there was a lot of inspiration from Twitter in the way the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) were designed. But there was enough of the Instagram branding that made it feel like it was its own app as well.
I did struggle right off the bat knowing where one set of posts and replies ended and the next one began, but I’m honestly thinking that may just be a me thing and that I’m being nitpicky about it.
The navigation of the app was super easy to use. We’re seeing a lot of similar navigations in apps for ease of use, so there wasn’t anything surprising there.
Search Functionality
The search functionality was laid out very similarly to Twitter and was incredibly intuitive. I admit that I’ve been a big fan of Instagram’s UI design, and that may be biasing my opinion, but I really love how easy it was to search for things on the app.
The search functionality automatically shows accounts the app recommends following based on your current following list, but quickly provides access to a search bar to directly find what you’re looking for.
Search bars seem so easy and simple in theory, but I’ve been on enough sites and apps with less-than-ideal search bars, so this is a big thing for me to say an app is successful.
Posting a Thread
Posting went exactly as I expected, with the layout being really similar to Twitter in being able to type freely and tag accounts. I was surprised to see that when I went to add hashtags, that it was automatically providing a list of hashtags to select like other platforms. I’m wondering if that’s due to there not being enough content to pull from yet, but we’ll see as the app grows.
I did have to look up the character count, which was a whopping 500 characters! But I did struggle knowing how close I was to hitting that character count. I did finally notice a character counter in the top right corner, but it went away when I cleared out some of my content. So, I’m guessing it’s there to let you know when you’re close to hitting your max. It would be nice to have that counter from the beginning, but at least we can tell when we’re close.
I also liked how when I dropped in a link, it kept the link preview when I deleted the actual link from the post. Sometimes, I don’t want the actual link in my copy because I feel like it can be overlooked, so having this option is nice just in case you need it.
I do admit I love the 500-character limit. I feel like you can say more — I mean, I know you can because it’s more characters — from a story perspective. Honestly, I have struggled some using Twitter’s 240 characters to tell a good story for the brands I work with. But, 500 seems like a good sweet spot to tell the story without taking up too much time and space.
All-in-all, I am very impressed with Threads. I’m interested to see how it holds up. But, I do think of all the “Twitter Killers” out there, this one has a serious chance of surviving and thriving, due to it being backed and designed by Meta and the integration with Instagram.
What are your thoughts?
