When Meta launched Threads, its Twitter competitor, yesterday suddenly it seemed that everyone was talking about stitching. “There’s a lot of puns right now in the app,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said on the Hard Fork podcast yesterday. “The punnage is over the top.”

“Should reposting a thread be called cross stitching?” wondered Shopify on its Threads account. Standup comedian Mike Feeny posted, “I will only refer to the amount of followers a person has here as their ‘Thread Count.'” Crafters, of course, jumped in to remark on the app’s crafty name as well. Knitwear designer Xandy Peters posted that Threads is “a social media platform tailor-made for fiber artists.” Vickie Howell, craft personality and founder of the YarnYay subscription box, wrote, “I’ve been Twitter-fasting for years now. But, I mean, with a name like Threads, how could I not jump on?”  The big box stores got in on the action, too. JOANN posted, “Our thread count is rising! That’s what you call followers here, right?’

The meme account, Wasted, created a meme showing Elon Musk reacting happily to the iconic Royal Dansk cookie tin. In the next image, he’s upset realizing the tin is full of spools of thread.

The launch

Threads has experienced remarkable early growth. More than 30 million people downloaded the app in the first 24 hours.

Part of that momentum is certainly fueled by how easy Meta has made it to get started on the new platform. Gabrielle Blair, the founder of Alt Summit and blogger at Design Mom, noted in her newsletter this morning, “If you already have an Instagram account, it’s super easy to use Threads, you download the app and then it recognizes your Instagram and you’re in. You don’t have to set up a profile or log in. I’m sure that’s a big part of why so many users jumped on so quickly. It’s really easy — the easiest platform onboarding I’ve ever encountered.” Users are able to immediately follow all of the accounts they’re already following on Instagram, making the feed instantly populated by recognizable accounts with relevant content.

Concerns

There are no hashtags on the app, at least not right now, which means it’s challenging to follow specific ideas, names, and events. Some users have also expressed concern about a line in the user agreement that ties Threads accounts to Instagram. “Your Threads profile is part of your Instagram account, and may be deleted at any time by deleting your Instagram account.” According to the New York Times today, Instagram said it was looking into alternate ways that Threads users can deactivate their accounts.

Momentum

Also according to the Times, Threads is on pace to exceed 100 million users by mid-September, a level of growth on par with ChatGPT exponential rise. Threads is a direct competitor to Twitter and the layout will feel very familiar to Twitter users. It’s text-focused and the comments are as primary as the original post (unlike on Instagram or Facebook, where comments are secondary content). This format on Twitter proved to encourage public discourse, especially among journalists, but in many other communities as well, including craft.

Twitter has been around for 17 years now and has 237 million daily users, according to its most recent publicly shared stats, but many users have become disenchanted with the site after Elon Musk purchased it in October 2022 for $44 billion, due to outages, bugs, and alarmingly lax content moderation.

One notable difference between Threads and other social networks is that it’s decentralized. Threads is built on the ActivityPub protocol, the same protocol that Mastodon is built on. “I do think that decentralization, but more specifically and more broadly, more open systems are where the industry is getting pulled and where it’s going over time, and for us, a new app offers an opportunity to meaningfully participate in that space.” This decentralization, Mosseri says, means that in the future creators will be able to port their audience off the app if they decide to leave Threads.

In its early days, Threads appears to have a friendly vibe, with many accounts introducing themselves and trying to determine their approach. “Threads kinda feels like 2007 Facebook statuses and I don’t hate it,” wrote creative strategist Kelly Fiance. Illustrator Carlianne Tipset of Carlieanne Creates took things a step further, writing:

“Just saying if Instagram wants to make a better Etsy and import all my followers there too I wouldn’t be mad about it.”

The Threads logo is a stylized @ symbol that looks as though it’s made from a single piece of thread. Although many accounts have wondered whether the stitchy lingo will extend beyond the app’s name, and Mosseri said “stitch” was the most frequent suggestion for what posts might be called, Meta posted a Threads lingo dictionary today stating that terms users are already familiar with from other social media apps, such as “post” and “repost,” will also be used on Threads.

Threads magazine, a publication for sewing enthusiasts that’s been around for 37 years, posted a lighthearted response to the use of its name for the new app. “The rumors are completely untrue,” they wrote on their Threads account along with a photo of a pineapple cocktail. “We did not kill Twitter. We were drinking pina coladas when this all went down.”