There is a visible excitement amongst the fans and tech enthusiasts about the newly-launched Threads app by Meta.
More than 10 hours after its launch, over 14 million people have downloaded the social media app, widely pegged to rival Elon Musk’s Twitter.
But the topic of discussion, especially in India’s southern part, centred around the app’s logo, as many netizens found it to be eerily similar to Dravidian languages Tamil and Malayalam.
While some found it to be resembling the Tamil alphabet ‘Ku’, others argued that the logo resembles Malayalam letters ‘Thr’ and ‘Kra’.
There were others who claimed that logo resembles the Hindi letter Om— a sacred sound and syllable and an invocation in Hinduism.
Some even made sardonic remarks claiming that the app’s logo looked like the Indian confectionery jalebi.
Instagram Threads logo is Malayalam conjunct ‘ത്ര’ (Thra) , the first conjuct in the word threads , with a 90 degree rotation pic.twitter.com/ohTjXUwFvH
— 𝗔𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗿 𝗔𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗱 (@anivar) July 6, 2023
What is Threads?
Dubbed the “Twitter-killer”, Meta launched another social media app for those who want to opt out of Elon Musk’s Twitter.
The new social media app is based on Instagram’s account system and allows people to discuss everything.
The application’s description reads, “Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things — or build a loyal following to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world.”
On Threads, users can create text-based posts with up to 500 characters and share photos and videos up to five minutes long.
The app looks relatively similar to Twitter, featuring a minimal interface with the options to like, comment, repost, and share threads.
Since Threads is closely tied to Instagram, one can log in with your Instagram username and easily follow all the same people you follow on the other platform.
Meta has extended some of Instagram’s privacy controls to Threads as well, such as the ability to filter out certain words in replies.
The app also gives users the option to limit who can reply to your threads to everyone on the platform, people you follow, or only the users who you mentioned in your post.
“We believe this decentralized approach, similar to the protocols governing email and the web itself, will play an important role in the future of online platforms,” Meta says.
“Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol — we hope that by joining this fast-growing ecosystem of interoperable services, Threads will help people find their community, no matter what app they use.”
