On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg began testing a horizontal swiping feature for his pet project Threads, the app’s The main purpose seems to be to spoof Elon Musk. The feature appears to have been posted by Musk on Twitter about two weeks ago, noting that he wanted to add it to the X last year.
“Swipe right to reply, swipe left to save, tap and hold to do everything else. Very clean,” Musk said. tweet Starting March 7th. “I’ve been dying to do this for a year.”
Zach posted on Threads on Wednesday about the new feature he’s testing.
“New feature we’re testing: swipe to like or tell us you’re not interested in this article,” Meta’s CEO posted. “This is an easy way to let us know you’d like to see more content on your feed.”
Let’s not forget that less than a year ago, Zuckerberg launched a stripped-down version of Threads as an alternative to Musk’s “dying” Twitter. The two boyish billionaires bickered with each other for days in the days following the initial release.
“Zach is an asshole.” Musk tweeted Shortly after Threads went live.
“about,” Zach said on Threadsmocking one of Musk’s typical responses.
However, the horizontal sliding plans of Meta and X differ greatly. The idea of swiping left and right in Zuck is a lot like Tinder; swiping right shows similar content, while swiping left shows less content. Musk, on the other hand, wants horizontal swiping to replace the like and reply buttons that appear at the bottom of tweets.
Many have speculated that the thread would actually only need to be slightly successful to eliminate X entirely.Last we heard from Zach, Threads has 130 million Monthly active users. It’s a far cry from Instagram, but there are still over 100 million users who don’t know how to use X.
The feature Threads is testing is noteworthy because it will allow users to have more control over their algorithms. Instagram and Facebook give you very limited control, but apps like TikTok offer this algorithmic switch. Musk, on the other hand, seems to just want his app to look cleaner.
Threads is very close to being a good X competitor, but Zuck makes it boring by design. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said many times Topics do not promote news or politicsThe same content drove Twitter’s success over the years, but it was deemed “too risky.” So users have to choose between X, where hate speech and misinformation is rampant, and Threads, where there isn’t much to get excited about.
Zack doesn’t announce every new feature on Threads, but when he does, you know he’s shouting it out to someone special: Elon Musk. Threads are essentially Zuck’s playground for messing with X’s owners. Considering the fact that Musk has been eager to implement horizontal sliding, I’d say it’s working.