Threads: The new social app and what it means for book lovers
twitter by meta
Threads is a new twitter-like app that was recently launched by Meta, aka Facebook. Book lovers around the world are already excited for this new and improved platform to talk about all things bookish!
Why was Threads created?
Meta created Threads as a way to expand and do what Instagram and Facebook does not.
Instagram is centered around photos, aesthetics, and lifestyle, while Facebook is more about keeping in touch with friends, family, and old schoolmates. Threats will be the place for users to share their ideas in a more text-centric format, not unlike Twitter.
The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation… We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Popular features on Threads:
When you sign up, you are asked to provide a username. If you have the app connected to Instagram, then your Instagram username will automatically upload into Threats. A cool feature allows you to also automatically input your Instagram bio and link with the click of a button.
The link is a great feature that book bloggers and authors should definitely take advantage of!
Once you get into the main part of Threads, you can automatically upload your profile photo from Instagram.
Like Instagram, you can set your profile to be public or private.
After you move past the first page, Threads asks you if you want to follow everyone that you already follow on Instagram. This feature is really cool for a couple of reasons:
- You can easily and automatically follow all of your friends that you are already following on Instagram. It saves you the trouble of having to ask your friends for their new usernames.
- When you sign in, you will see some requests from bookstagrammers who clicked on the “follow all” feature who want to follow you on this new platform.
When you go to create a post, the button is right at the bottom of the screen, in the middle, exactly like how it is on Instagram! There is also an easy-to-find Home icon, a search tool, a notifications page, and the icon to take you to your personal profile.
So far, everything is super simple, user-friendly, and solves problems that we didn’t even know we had!
The difference between Threats and Twitter:
One thing that stands out is that Threads does not use hashtags, unlike all of the other major social media platforms.
After noticing the lack of tags, we did an experiment in our first post and added a few bookish hashtags at the end, like what you would do on an Instagram post. But those hashtags on not live, meaning that if you click on one, you aren’t brought to a new page where other users also post with the same hashtag.
Hashtags are a popular way to find like-minded people on social media. So how, exactly, do you discover new and interesting bookish accounts?
The only answer we have at the moment is to just simply look at the public threads and discover people that way. You can scroll through your feed to see what your friends are posting, hop into a thread discussion, and find a new friend just by talking to them. So essentially you are making new friends with the friends of your current friends. In other words – mutual friends is the way to make connections.
The Books4Movies Threads account:
Books4Movies now has a Threads account!
You can expect to see all of our great content on this new platform, plus more news, trends, opinions, and bookish predictions.
Things that need to be improved:
- For one, the algorithm needs a little work. Despite having 100% bookish content, my feed is full of posts from influencers, athletes, entertainers, and other people who are not in the bookish niche.
- Different ways to connect with like-minded people. Hashtags, alt-text, and topic searches would give us better access to content that we want to see
- Deleting the account. At the moment, if you want to permanently delete Threads, you also have to delete Instagram. The only option is to deactivate the account, but we need more than that. See the photos below for how to delete and deactivate the account.
