On Thursday, Oct. 3, Facebook launched a groundbreaking app that is putting a lot of pressure on Snapchat. The app called “Threads,” which was developed and published by Facebook as a companion app to Instagram.
Threads is an app where you connect with your Instagram friends on a separate app to be able to create stories like Snapchat and send your friends pictures and chats. Threads also allows you to set your status automatically with things like free, busy, bored, watching tv, eating, studying, gaming.
This app is a huge competitor with Snapchat because it’s almost just like it, but you only have a certain group of people you share with and no one knows when you remove them. Snapchat is a little different. For Snapchat you have a huge list of friends and they can all see your public story, but you can also create a private group for people of your choice.
Threads allows you to connect with all your friends on Instagram, but then use the Threads app, to let you connect with a specific group of your friends. But with Snapchat’s head start, will Thread be able to succeed as a commonly used app?
Alexa Spritzler, a sophomore marketing major, explained that she probably won’t use the app since she didn’t even know what it was and none of her friends use it.
“Threads? What is that?” Spritzler said.
After the Threads app was explained to Spritzler, she went on to say, “I think it’s a good idea for Instagram to have this as an option, but I don’t think my friends or I will use it since none of us have heard about it, and after reading the reviews about the app even if I do look to download, it won’t be for a while,” Spritzler said.
Even though Instagram is trying to tap into Snapchat’s revenue, Spritzler doesn’t think it will happen any time soon, because Snapchat is still so popular, and it is continually being updated.
Anna Schmader, a sophomore, majoring in marketing, said after she downloaded the app, she was left in the dark. Schmader didn’t know how to navigate it. After that, Schmader said, that she was really turned off with the app and will probably never use it again.
“Once I let it [Threads] log into my Instagram account, it’s kind of just dumped me out in the dark. There was nothing that helped me figure out what do to once I added some friends to my private group,” Schmader said.
“I wanted to see what Threads all was about. I was kind of confused when I was setting it up because it’s like Snapchat but different. It was hard to understand what everything was and even what you could do with the app,” Victoria Camacho said, freshman, majoring in nursing, who downloaded Threads earlier in the day and tried using it.
When looking at Threads, many people do not think it is worth putting any time or data into it right now. The app does have the potential to be the next Snapchat but needs major work and support to have a fighting chance in bringing down Snapchat.
