Threads to allow extra long posts, does this really mean blogging is back?

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Threads to allow extra long posts, does this really mean blogging is back?

9 September 2025

Meta is adding a new feature to let you add a bunch of extra text to Threads posts — no screenshots of text blocks required. Starting today, Meta is rolling out a tool that lets you attach up to 10,000 characters of text to Threads posts, giving you a way to build upon the 500-character text limit already available when making a post.

The feature will certainly appeal to people looking for a platform that allows them to publish blog-like posts with ease.

What really caught my eye though was the “blogging is back” byline appended to the Verge article. I’m not sure who would have written that, Peters, or an editor. Is blogging really back? Did blogging ever really go away? Is the Verge trying to suggest this new Threads feature will bring about a blogging resurgence? Surely the Verge, and their writers, are aware of Indie/Small/Open web?

Blogging has been back for sometime, if it even went away.

Upcoming Threads feature allows users to hide spoilers in their posts

18 June 2025

Meta’s Adam Mosseri, writing on his Threads page:

We’re testing a way for you to hide spoilers in Threads posts. When creating a post, highlight text or images and tap “mark spoiler” to blur it. People can reveal the hidden text or image by tapping it in their feed.

Mosseri claims no other micro-blogging service offers such a feature, and maybe he’s right.

If I weren’t doing the whole Indie Web/Small Web thing of maintaining my own web presence, I’d find the feature useful if I was using my Threads page to, say, write about film. I could safely include possible spoilers when writing my thoughts on a movie, knowing a reader would consciously need to click on the blanked out line of text, to reveal what was there.

This feature update reminds me it has been almost two years since Threads launched. I’m still using my account, sparingly, but it looks like some people have taken to using Threads like it was the website they never had.

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social media, social networks, Threads

Threads to allow users to select following feed as their default

29 November 2024

This to finally spare us the time-wasting, sometimes totally irrelevant, tyranny of the “for you” tab. Chris Welch, writing for The Verge, says Meta has started testing a feature allowing users to select their preferred feed, be it “for you”, “following”, or even one custom made, as the stream they’ll see all the time. It can’t happen soon enough.

If you’re in the test, here’s how to set your default feed: open the Threads app and tap and hold on any feed at the top. From there, choose “edit feeds,” and that’s where you’ll be able to reorder them. Whichever feed you put in the first slot will appear whenever you open Threads.

I’m obviously not part of the test, as I couldn’t set my following feed as the default, but I did take time to setup a custom feed. They seem to be a little like the list feature Twitter has (or had), whereby you can read someone’s account without having to follow them. It’s a great way to set up feeds with a particular focus, without having the same accounts clutter your following feed.

I’m hoping the “test” proves successful, and the ability to select one feed or another as the default, is made available to all Threads members.

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social media, social networks, Threads

Is the grass greener on the Bluesky side of the fence?

21 November 2024

Twitter-like microblogging social network Bluesky is having its moment in the sun. We’ve all seen the multiple headlines of late heralding the arrival of another several million new members, most of whom have migrated from Twitter.

The buzz is similar to that surrounding Mastodon about two years ago. Even if Mastodon’s decentralised structure confused many people. But it’s really not that puzzling. Ignore the decentralised talk — even though that sort of setup is probably a good thing — and just join.

If you’re in Australia, or want to interact in an Australian environment, and looking for somewhere you can discuss pretty much whatever you want (within reason) try Aus Social. For the most part, you’ll still be able to interact with people you know, even if they’re on a different instance (server).

I think if what has happened at Twitter has taught us anything, that’s not to keep your social network eggs in the same basket. Presently, I’m on three networks, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. I’m hardly an active participant on any, but Mastodon is where I see the most response to something I post. Bluesky might be next, while I see the least amount on Threads, which to me, sometimes feels like a daytime soap opera.

But maintaining three social network pages isn’t particularly hard work, as I largely cross-post the same content across them all, as a write once, publish multiple times, strategy. There are apps, such as Croissant, that will do the same thing, if you’re prepared to pay a subscription.

The main reason I suggest having a presence on Mastodon, is because it’s decentralised and independent. No one can stage a complete buy-out, as they did with Twitter, because no one person, or entity, has total control. Every Mastodon instance, which makes up its decentralised network, is administered by different people. And anyone who feels so compelled, can setup their own instance, if they want to.

Bluesky, despite claiming to be decentralised, isn’t really, as Can Olcer explains. This puzzled me when I joined. I envisaged a sign-up process similar to Mastodon, where I had to find an instance I liked, and join through that.

Instead, I signed up at the Bluesky website, and that was it. There were no questions about whether I preferred to be on an Australian instance, a social instance, nothing. None of this is necessarily a problem though, but it does leave open the possibility that Bluesky, as a commercial, potentially profiting making entity, may one day follow in the footsteps of Twitter.

New Threads micro-blogging features, badge number Easter egg

19 August 2024

Coming soon to Threads on the website: the facility to save post drafts, and schedule posts. Post insights, similar I imagine, to those on Instagram, are also on the way, according to a recent thread by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Scheduling posts and saving drafts — at least if using Threads through the website — is going to be a bonus, especially for those who prefer to use the micro-blogging platform as their main web presence. I found the option useful when I used to be more active on X/Twitter.

And for those who like such things, there’s also a fun Easter-egg feature to check out, on the app, which I’ve seen a few people writing about. Tap on the name of a Threads member on their bio, and a popup will appear at the bottom of the screen.

This shows the member’s join date, and Threads badge number. Tap again near the bottom of that, and a full screen animation will appear, displaying the same information.

Threads first birthday gift to users: advertising?

5 July 2024

Break out the coffee and the cake: a celebration is on the cards. Tomorrow, Threads, Meta’s answer — and much needed foil — to X/Twitter, notches up its first birthday. I was there as the platform began rolling out, and managed to score (just) a relatively low (five-figure) badge number. 98,522 for the record. These membership number badges were, for a time, displayed on a member’s corresponding Instagram (IG) page. Mark Zuckerberg’s IG page boasted the surely desirable number one badge.

But the badges have long since vanished, and Threads, after a few fits and starts, has taken its place — albeit if engagement is on the lower side — with the other micro-blogging style social media platforms, including Mastodon and Bluesky. And with one-hundred-and-seventy-five million active monthly users, it’s probably been a good first year for Threads.

In contrast, X/Twitter didn’t reach the same number of active monthly users until well into 2012, some six years after launching. But making these sorts of comparisons between Threads versus what was then Twitter, isn’t all that helpful. Twitter had to start from scratch. It was, just about, the first of its kind. I still recall some the discussions around X/Twitter, following its debut. A lot of people weren’t sure exactly what the platform was about, or what it was meant to achieve.

X/Twitter’s relatively slow uptake could be partly attributed to this bafflement that enveloped the platform. By the time Threads arrived though, we were all seasoned social media platform users. On top of that, it was a simple matter of clicking a button on your IG page, to become a Threads member. The boost IG and — to a lesser extent — Facebook, gave Threads, cannot be understated.

Aside though from posting what I call an online journal entry daily, I don’t really do much on Threads, or any of the social media platforms, for that matter. But I do get drawn into some of the conversations that appear, courtesy of the Threads algorithm, in my main feed. These posts are an intriguing combination of day to day happenings and situations. There are retellings of encounters with people nice, and not so nice. Of dating disasters, and weird goings-on at work.

In a sense, these posts from people I don’t follow, or even know of, are akin to the “suggested for you” content that litters many an IG feed. Somehow though, these Threads posts don’t seem quite as annoying, or intrusive, as the — and I won’t mince my words here — shit that features on IG. My big hope for Threads is that it doesn’t go the way of IG, which now borders on the unbearable. But Threads may become a little more IG-like in another way: the presence of ads.

While the prospect is apparently being considered, it may still be a year before ads begin making an appearance on the platform. To my mind, this is not so much a question of what happens, but rather, the way it happens. Threads needs to turn a profit. We, the users, cannot have this online playground to frolic on, without there being someway for Meta to pick up the tab.

Ads of some sort seem reasonable to me. As I say, it comes down to the way, rather than the what. Perhaps then there will be a measured approach to advertising. Or, worst case, perhaps not. The devil is very much going to be in the details here.

Threads web version here soon, Font Awesome glyph available

22 August 2023

Threads users have been waiting for a bevy of features to be added to the micro-blogging platform, and it looks like a web version — something I’ve certainly been looking forward to — may arrive in a few days. Last week Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram (and I guess Threads), said Meta had been working on a web version for “a week or two”, but added that more work had been needed.

Being able to cross-post across platforms such as Instagram, Mastodon, Facebook, and Twitter/X, by way of the web is an absolute boon for me. No doubt there’s an app that does this, but I prefer the flexibility of being able to copy, paste, and alter posts, while going from one browser tab to another.

In other news, and I don’t know when this happened, but a Font Awesome Threads glyph has also become available. There’s only the one version at the moment, but maybe there will be more later.

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social networks, Threads

Threads still among top apps at Apple and Google

21 August 2023

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball last week:

At this moment, Threads is #2 on the App Store’s top free downloads list, and X is #51. On the Play Store, Threads is #6 and X is (scroll, scroll, scroll…) #66. This rebranding would be a firing offense if the mastermind behind it didn’t own the company. (So much for Threads being the one that’s supposedly gasping for air.)

Despite the good app install numbers, engagement reportedly remain low on Meta’s rival to Twitter/X. Abené Clayton, writing for The Guardian, says Threads saw 576,000 active users in August, compared to over two million in July.

Threads is up against a few competitors, Mastodon and Bluesky to name a few, so the market is perhaps a little crowded. I would add Twitter/X to that list, but owner Elon Musk seems intent on destroying the platform, and in the process, his plans for… world domination.

You don’t get 100,000,000 followers without telling a few stories

15 August 2023

After reading Move fast and beat Musk: The inside story of how Meta built Threads, by Naomi Nix and Will Oremus of The Washington Post, I’m certain the story behind the launch of Meta’s rival to Twitter, Threads, is ripe for adaptation to the big screen.

In exactly the same way The Accidental Billionaires, the 2009 book by American author Ben Mezrich, about the founding of Facebook, spawned the 2010 David Fincher made movie, The Social Network.

All the ingredients of a thriller-like race against time are there. Trust me. So here I am, calling action.

First, opportunity presents itself:

The mercurial Musk had just taken over Twitter. Amid the ensuing chaos, [head of Instagram Adam] Mosseri’s boss at rival Meta smelled opportunity.

Next there are senior Meta executives on family holidays in Europe, taking breathless phone calls from their boss in the middle of the night:

It was nighttime in Italy, and Mosseri spoke softly to avoid waking his sleeping wife. The group discussed Twitter-like features they could add to existing apps, including Instagram.

What? Enhance an existing app to make it look like something it isn’t? Are you for real? No, the boss wants to land the legendary three-thousand pound marlin here:

Zuckerberg, however, had a different idea: “What if we went bigger?”

Now that exact requirements are understood, and the enormity of the task at hand can be seen in the cold light of day, the inevitable panic begins to set in:

“Oh God, we’ve got to figure this out, because [Zuckerberg is] very excited about this,” Mosseri recalled thinking. “Sometimes you can tell when he kind of gets his teeth into something.”

The last thing, of course, you want to do is disappoint the boss. But you know what they say: when the going gets tough, the tough get going:

With a mandate from Zuckerberg to take a big risk, Mosseri assembled a lean, engineer-heavy team of fewer than 60 people to hack together a bare-bones app on a breakneck timetable more reminiscent of a start-up than an entrenched tech giant.

That paragraph sounds like it packs a punch, but a sixty person team is hardly “reminiscent of a start-up”. Instagram, which Threads is built upon, was, at the beginning, the work of two people, Michel Krieger and Kevin Systrom. But who cares? This is the movies, and all audiences want is a great story.

And size of the development team notwithstanding, there were challengers aplenty. Mainly what product features not to include, rather than what to ship:

To keep things moving, the Threads team punted thorny decisions and eschewed difficult features, including private messages and the ability to search for content or view the feeds of people you don’t follow.

But the clock is ticking. No one knows when the competitor — he who must not be named — might snatch back possession of the ball, and wrest the game away from the team we’re barracking for. But (naturally) such fears prove to be unfounded:

That night, a “core group” worked together at Meta headquarters while Mosseri and other team members chatted on an internal messaging forum, watching the sign-ups pour in. Mosseri recalled astonished team members asking, “Are we sure about these numbers? Can someone double-check that the logging isn’t messed up?”

And there we have it, the happy ending. One hundred million app signups. But wait, how can you call ever declining engagement, and plummeting time spent on the platform, a happy ending? Of course you can’t, but don’t you see where this is going? Wait for it. Wait for it. To a sequel, of course.

Watch this space, you will not be disappointed.

ABC streamlines Twitter/X activity, Musk calls it censorship

14 August 2023

Last week, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reduced the number of active pages it has on Twitter/X to just four. The Triple J page, which I follow, was among accounts to be archived. David Anderson, managing director of the ABC, says the move follows a trial in February this year, when three accounts were shuttered:

“In February we closed three program accounts, for Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics, and the results of that have been positive,” he said. Mr Anderson said the reduced activity will allow staff to focus “on the accounts that overwhelmingly provide the most value.”

The ABC has been the subject of a number of rounds of staff cuts in recent years, and doubtless archiving some of the Twitter/X pages will reduce staff workloads. Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, however hit back at the decision, labelling it censorship:

Well of course they prefer censorship-friendly social media. The Australian public does not.

What does he mean censorship, and since when has Musk had it down with the Australian public? The ABC is operating on plenty of other channels, including their website, television and radio, along with other social media services such as Facebook.

The ABC also have a number of active Threads accounts, and are looking into boosting their presence there further. Here’s hoping the page of the aforementioned Triple J is among them.

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