Last week, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram released a new app: Threads. It became the most rapidly downloaded app ever, amassing a whopping 30 million downloads in just 16 hours. 

Threads is a text-based social media conversation app similar to Twitter. In fact, some are calling Threads the “Twitter killer” because the similarities between the platforms are so uncanny. 

So what’s behind Threads’ enormous popularity? Can it last? And will it spell the end of Twitter? 

Today, culture editor Osman Faruqi on Threads, Twitter, and our never-ending desire for distraction.

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