This, so much this. I also find it rather coincidental that fb cam out with threads soon after the twitter implosion. Opportunistic feasting on a dead carcass perhaps?
According to Adam Mosseri, IG had been working on Threads in various forms since 2021. Apparently they struggled to make it a native part of IG, then started working on the stand-alone version in 2022. So if he is to be believed, Threads development predates Twitter’s sale to Musk.
my guess is that they were working on it in the background and when musk bought tw they started pouring way more resources into it and turned it into a standalone app
Threads still doesn't have #hashtag searching IIRC. It's missing a huge number of features. It's clear that they only came out as early as they did because they saw an opportunity to eat Twitter's lunch.
Bluesky is the same way. There are a lot of features there that still need to be implemented.
I’m glad Masto at least has hashtags and video and gifs and editing. For me right now it has the best features and the best experience. I’m pretty happy with it.
Still exciting to be on the ground floor, when every day out week could bring a new update or feature. Wonder how they'll improve over the next 3 months
Considering development time, server setup, testing time, etc… They probably did. It probably took several months to develop, deploy, integrate with the rest of their systems, and test. And then it’s simply a matter of waiting on Musk to do something stupid before they announce the launch, so all the freshly spurned users are happy to switch.