Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Seqiuoa-backed Slack alternative, Threads said on its website.
The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said that the Threads.com team will join Shopify.
It was thrown into the limelight after Meta launched Threads, its Twitter-like social network.
Notably, Meta also had another product named Threads, an Instagram companion app that started in 2019 and was shut down in 2021.
And on Android the app crossed the mark of a million lifetime downloads with just a few downloads prior to Meta launching its Threads social network.
Apple has removed the Meta-owned end-to-end encrypted messaging app WhatsApp from its App Store in China following a government order citing national security concerns, the news agency Reuters reported Friday.
Meta’s newer, Twitter-esque text-based social networking app, Threads, has also been pulled from the App Store for the same reason, it said.
But the AppleCensorship site, which tracks App Store removals, records both Signal and Telegram as having been “disappeared” from Apple’s mainland China App Store.
Last year another Twitter alternative, Jack Dorsey-backed Damus, was also pulled from Apple’s China App Store shortly after it had been approved.
Although quite a number evidently managed to do so, as Threads quickly landed in the top 5 on Apple’s China App Store last summer.
Meta-owned social network Threads is finally testing a “Recent” filter to sort search results by the latest.
“We’re starting to test this with a small number of people, so it’s easier to find relevant search results in real-time,” he said in a reply to a user.
A user part of the test posted that they could see “Top” and “Recent” filters on the search results screen.
They noted that the “Recent” filter isn’t strictly chronological, but it shows the latest posts better than the “Top” filter.
Earlier this year, the company accidentally rolled out the option to sort search results by the latest.
According to a post from Ghost founder John O’Nolan, the company — which is structured as a nonprofit — is considering federating Ghost over ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the fediverse.
It also asks how federation would personally benefit Ghost users.
With Ghost, however, the idea could be to federate the accounts of the writers who use Ghost to publish their content.
After seeing O’Nolan’s post, Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput reached out to help with the ActivityPub integration, which O’Nolan accepted.
In addition to Newton, other notable Ghost users include 404Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and airs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Meta said on Monday that it plans to “temporarily” shutter Threads in Turkey from April 29, in response to an interim injunction imposed by the Turkish competition authority last month over the way Meta shares data between Threads and Instagram.
In 2022, Turkey imposed a $18.6 million fine on Meta for combining user data across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Initially, the only way Meta allowed users to delete a Threads profile was by deleting their whole Instagram account, though it later introduced a separate mechanism for those wishing to ditch their Threads profile only.
Turkish regulators had announced the investigation on the way Meta linked Threads with Instagram in December, concluding last month that there was a strong case to answer for.
The latter of these options means a user’s profile can be resurrected when and if Threads is available in the country again.
For instance, those who want to track analytics around Threads’ posts can use an Insights API to retrieve things like views, likes, replies, reposts, and quotes.
There are also details on how to publish posts and media via the API, retrieve replies, and a series of troubleshooting tips.
So far, Threads API beta testers have included social tool makers like Sprinklr, Sprout Social, Social News Desk, Hootsuite, and tech news board Techmeme.
Instead, users still have to visit their settings in the Threads app itself to publish to the fediverse.
Meta says the new documentation will be updated over time as it gathers feedback from developers.
Despite its similarities, Instagram Threads is no X.
The traffic surge drove #earthquake to the top of X’s Trends section, followed by other areas of impact, like “East Coast,” “Long Island,” “Philly,” “Manhattan” and “Brooklyn.” Meanwhile, earthquake-related terms didn’t register on Threads’ trends section until closer to 2 p.m.
That’s not to say people weren’t discussing the earthquake on Threads — many were.
Around 1 p.m. on Friday, TechCrunch reached out to Instagram to ask why the earthquake didn’t make it into Threads’ top trends.
The phone kept buzzing, and there was, ‘earthquake, earthquake, earthquake.
The account operated by Biden’s team published a message regarding the president’s support of reproductive freedom on Threads, Meta’s up-and-coming Twitter/X competitor.
Soon after, Threads users noticed that his post sported a Threads’ fediverse sharing logo — a circular shape that resembles planets orbiting a star, which gives a sense of the interconnected universe that makes up the fediverse.
When Meta introduced Threads, its text-focused Twitter/X competitor, the company said it planned to federate the app so users on Mastodon and other networks could see and respond to Threads’ users posts.
Late last year, Threads began testing that integration and, in March, it opened up fediverse sharing to Threads users in beta.
For example, at present, Threads users can’t see who replied or liked their posts from other servers and can’t share their posts with polls.
As the election cycle heats up, Instagram and Threads will be cooling down the amount of political content entering many users’ feeds.
These changes, which limit the reach of political content from accounts users don’t already follow, are enacted by default.
If you’re already wondering how to get that kind of content back into your feed, you can follow our guide on changing Instagram’s political settings here.
Threads will host, but not “amplify” news, per remarks from its head Adam Mosseri’s last year.
And what posts and topics will Instagram actually deem to be political?
