Meta reportedly accidentally released its newly developed Twitter-like
app ‘Threads’ into the Google Play store for a brief moment. The occurrence was spotted by app
researcher Alessandro Paluzzi who shared screenshots of some UI elements of the
app.
Here's the store listing screenshots 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/kBK9OSRhNF
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) July 1, 2023
The screenshots show what Threads looks like, and its format and interface appear to be very similar to Twitter. It has all the features that are part of Twitter, including character counts, icons for attachment, liking, sharing, reposting, and replying, circular profile pictures, and Meta’s version of verification checks. In one of the images that shows the app’s login screen, it is evident that Threads users will be able to log in using their Instagram accounts.
Threads was officially previewed by Meta at one of its
internal meetings. The platform had been in development since January under the
name ‘Project 92.’ It was later reportedly named ‘Barcelona’ – Meta’s
text-based social platform. Paluzzi shared other details of Barcelona at the
time, such as the character limit for posts being 500, the limit of number of
posts in each thread being 100, and more.
The fact that Threads was temporarily spotted on Play
Store suggests that it could be rolling out some time soon, although Meta has confirmed
no such news.