Instagram is one of the most widely used apps globally. From friends to family members - everyone uses this popular app. Through this app, you can meet a new set of people, share photos, upload Insta stories and talk about everything you want to share.
But sometimes we want to communicate exclusively with our close friends. Earlier in May, it worked on Direct - its standalone messaging app but later they stopped working on it.
Later they launched "close friends" which lets one share their stories and special moments with the added list of friends. But people want to share their stories, status, and location privately with a set of known people and not with unknown strangers.
So Facebook came up with a new chat app for Instagram called "Threads". Now you can bring your close peers together and share the private moments of your life.
The main aim of this new app is to bring close friends together and allow them to share text, location, videos, and photos. It also has its inbox option like Instagram, where you can read and reply to your close friends directly through the app.
This app also allows you to add or remove someone from the group and there is no such thing called message requests from unknown strangers.
The main components of Threads include the camera that opens by default as and when the user opens the app. This astounding feature enables you to share photos by snapping, which also includes videos too.
The following feature is the inbox where it allows the user to share messages with their smaller circle of friends in the group.
Finally, the auto-status update feature which lets your friends know your exact location and whereabouts. For example: Say you are coming out of your gym and visiting a bakery next to it, this app will let your friends know about it. Cool right? This feature also enables you to customize your status by creating one or you can pick up from the possible statuses given by Instagram.
If no, you can go with the auto-status mode which directly tells what you are up to at a certain point in time. But what if you don't want to be observed? Because some might not like being constantly observed by another person – as it's termed as creepy.
This raises the question about the privacy of users. Again, there's no need to worry about it – as the whole thing remains under your control. You can turn off the auto-status mode anytime you feel like to avoid close attention to every private thing you do.
Even Facebook took to its newsroom blog explaining about the impact of data collection, privacy of users and ads they see.
Facebook said, "The way we use data from other parts of Facebook and Instagram to deliver relevant ads to you remains the same... Precise location information collected for Auto Status is a new feature specific to Threads and will not be used for ads."
However, there are certain controversies about this app. People consider it a copy-cat version of Snapchat but this step turned out a big success for Instagram.
This app rolled out on Android and iOS on October 3, 2019.
