Instagram provides an early look of its Twitter rival 'Threads'

Users can soon follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon

Meta-owned Instagram is providing users a sneak peek at its Twitter competitor Threads on the web ahead of its official launch on July 6.

"Let's do this. Welcome to Threads" Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said in his first message posted on July 4 on the platform.

Several other accounts such as Instagram head Adam Mosseri, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk (more commonly known as Gary Vee) and brands such as Netflix also appear to have gone live on the service. These pages have been taken down after this story published.

Moneycontrol was the first to report on Meta's plans to launch a text-based app, then codenamed P92, in March 2023.

The app is also expected to support ActivityPub, the decentralised social networking protocol powering services such as Mastodon and other federated apps, Moneycontrol reported at the time.

The web interface indicates that users can like, repost, comment and share posts. However, these options currently direct users to download the mobile app at the moment. Users will also have an option to embed these posts, which the company terms as 'threads'.

A screenshot of Threads Web Interface

On user's profiles, one can browse through the threads in one section and replies in another section. It also links out the user's Instagram profiles.

The service mentions that users can also soon follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon. "They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, such as @zuck@threads.net" it states.

With this launch, Instagram is looking to capitalise on the growing trend of Twitter users looking to migrate to alternative platforms even as the social media platform struggles to cope up with the chaos caused under the new owner Elon Musk.

Last week, the Elon Musk-owned social media firm put a "temporary" limit on the number of tweets users can read on a daily basis, in a bid to address "extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation".

The company is also no longer letting users access tweets, user profiles, or comments on the web unless they were logged in to an account also. Earlier this week, Twitter stated that it will be making Tweetdeck as a paid feature in 30 days, that will be available only for Twitter Blue subscribers.