Twitter announced today that it’s officially launching its new Threads feature, which allows anyone to stitch tweets together to tell a story that can’t be told in a tweet or post extra information. The company said last month that the feature was in testing, and today, it will start rolling out to all users after apparently passing all those tests.
Hundreds of thousands of Threads shared daily
Twitter said in a post announcing Threads that it realized a few years ago that users were stringing tweets together, which it called “threading.” That description does sort of provide a picture of what users are doing. It certainly sounds more positive than the word “tweetstorm,” although those who’ve read threaded tweets seething with anger may agree that “tweetstorm” is sometimes a better picture.
Essentially, Threads are a series of related thoughts all strung together through different tweets. They make it possible for Twitter users to share a full stream of thoughts despite the character limit. Twitter recently doubled the limit from 140 to 280 characters, but it’s clear that some thoughts still require a lot more characters than that.
According to the company, users tweet “hundreds of thousands of threads” each day.
How to create Threads
The Threads feature looks like Twitter’s latest attempt to make its platform more user-friendly. Those who are new to Twitter might feel out of their depth when they see the tweetstorms others post. The company said it created the feature to make it easier for users to create their own Threads while also making it easier to find all the tweets in a single thread.
Those who now have access to the feature will see a “plus” button, which is used to create Threads. All the tweets included in the thread will be published at the same time, so hopefully, it will be easier for those reading the thread to follow it and see all the tweets. After a thread has already been published, new tweets can still be added by using the “Add another Tweet” button.
The micro-blogging platform also added a “Show this thread” label so that users can more easily see all the tweets in the series.
All Android, iOS and web users will get the feature within the coming weeks. You’ll need to update the Twitter app when an update becomes available for your device in order to see all new features.
