The evident vision with Meta’s Threads is to capitalize on Twitter shooting its own foot now that the usage of its API has been curtailed; to short-circuit the already-failing invite-only Bluesky; and to counter the rise of the Fediverse/Mastodon.
Oh yes, of course it’s also to also give people something new to waste time on, since Facebook is increasingly full of old and dead people, and the growth rate of Instagram cannot resume that of its earlier years.
The decision to release a separate app is interesting, as is the decision to make the Threads account a “child” of an Instagram account.
Let’s see where this goes! Probably nowhere.