Remember Threads? Meta’s most recent foray into social media caused something of a splash when it first emerged, but it quickly became just another platform. Seemingly worried that not enough people are using it, Meta is now using Instagram as a way of pushing Threads usage.
While Meta has said nothing about it in any form of announcement, existing Threads users have started to notice that they are being prompted to cross-post content to Instagram. The hope, presumably, is that Instagram users yet to try out Threads will be tempted into doing so.
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Meta is using the prospect of reaching a larger audience with a prompt that has started to appear when users make a post to Thread. A message gives a user the chance to “Add this to your Instagram story”, going on with the suggestion that you will be able to “get more eyes on your posts by adding them to your Instagram story”.
Matt Navara shared an image of the prompt on Threads:
This is an option that may be genuinely useful for some people in some circumstances, but it ignores something about social media platforms — each has its own flavor, its own purpose, and its own type of content. Much of the content posted to Threads, for instance, is not really the sort of content that constitutes good material for Instagram Stories — much like Facebook posts generally don’t make great posts for X.
Meta may be trying to tell users this is a way to get more views (which it may be), but promoting Threads and growing its userbase is what this is really about.
Image credit: Iryna Budanova / Dreamstime.com
