I'm a very online Gen Zer who's spent the past 2 days on the Threads app everyone's talking about. I have thoughts.

• Meta launched Threads, a competitor app to Twitter, on July 6. 
• I downloaded the app to see what people were posting and what it was like compared to Twitter. 
• I found that Thread users' posts were wholesome and funny, but the app is missing some key features.

To be real, I downloaded Threads solely for the purpose of being able to write about it for my job. 

I write about online communities and social media trends at Insider, and the buzz around the emergence of Threads, a text posts app that has been described as a rival to Twitter, was bound to be something I was going to be reporting on — so I downloaded it. 

It's now been two days since then, and I've been slowly wading deep into the world of Threads to find out whether speculation about it replacing Twitter holds any weight. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has characterized Threads as a "friendly" space, in contrast to growing concerns about Elon Musk's approach to censoring content on Twitter. 

—i@m•Satya  (@TechGen18) July 6, 2023

So far, I've found that the community on Threads is definitely more geared towards positive content, although it feels like everyone is experimenting and no one's really figured out what they want to be saying on there yet. I also think that there are a number of kinks that need to be ironed out when it comes to user experience before the app can adequately match Twitter.

Let's get into it.

The Threads community is still maturing in its understanding of the app but overall it's very wholesome 

While I have a Twitter account, I must say I'm rather reluctant to post there. Most of my friends don't have Twitter and don't like being loud about their opinions on social media, so we mainly connect in other ways online, such as by sending each other funny TikToks when we come across them. 

I knew I was going to be more of a lurker on Threads initially, and began my experience on the app by trying to figure out how the community at large was using it. Since Threads accounts are linked to Instagram profiles, I was curious to see whether people would be trying to post similar content on Threads as they would on Instagram. 

—Cassie ⋆ (@cassiee1919) July 6, 2023

The app allows you to follow everyone you already follow on Instagram when you make an account, but I opted not to do this at first because I didn't necessarily want to follow a bunch of people I knew from school and haven't kept up with since on a brand new platform. 

As a result, my Threads homepage was initially saturated with a bunch of random companies trying to post "relatable" and "funny" content promoting their brands. I wasn't too fond of this so I decided to go to the "following" tab and press a button which allowed me to follow everyone I followed on Instagram who had a Threads account. 

The problem was, Threads is so new that few of my friends have made accounts so far. After asking around on a few group chats, I found out that people I know who are very interested in keeping up to date with trends made accounts to stay in the loop, but other friends, particularly those who do not already have a Twitter account, don't really care about the launch of Threads and don't want to get involved. 

My Threads feed now seemed to mainly feature a bunch of celebrities and influencers I had followed on Instagram when I was 14. I noticed that a lot of early Threads posts have been about people re-introducing themselves on the app and promoting their latest ventures, but aside from that it's all been a random hodge-podge of content. 

Some people have been posting memes about Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk's feud, others have been sharing their thoughts on important news (such as the release of "Speak Now (Taylor's version)"), and others have just been posting about how they're confused about what to post. 

Overall, the vibe is really quite wholesome, and that's actually been quite refreshing. Whenever I've been on Twitter lately, my feed has mainly been saturated with people commentating on celebrity controversies, arguing about their opinions on the future of Twitter, or sharing dark humor and jokes that are typically at the expense of others, so I haven't been hating my experience scrolling on Threads so far. 

The lack of some useful features has made posting on Threads a little bit tricky 

The first thing I decided to post on threads was a GIF with a caption — deciding it would be the best way to blend in and not embarrass myself too much. 

But disappointingly, I found that Threads doesn't yet have a built-in GIF library like Twitter does. I had to download a separate app for GIFs, save one to my camera roll, and copy it into my Threads post to share it on my account.

Threads is also missing a number of other features you can find on Twitter, like hashtags, a trending topics bar, or a keywords search bar. This has been particularly frustrating for me, as it's meant that all I've really been able to do to keep up with the different things people are saying on the app is scroll through my homepage furiously. 

The language of Threads doesn't seem very imaginative

My biggest (and pettiest) complaint about Threads is the current use of language for describing posts. According to a post made by the app's official account, the name for a post is "post," and a response from another user to your post is called a "reply." 

I would've thought that with a name like Threads, there would have been some more imaginative words that could be put into effect, and I'm not the only one who's saying that. A number of comments replying to the app's post suggested the installation of new terms, such as "stitching," "thread count," or "weaving." 

Overall, I was surprised to find I don't hate Threads (for now)

I don't think I can be too harsh about my qualms, since the app is so new. Mark Zuckerberg has himself said that there's a lot of "work ahead" until the app is fully built out, in a post he made on Threads on July 6, so I guess I'll just have to wait patiently for things to get better. 

For now, it seems Threads has been an enjoyable place for a lot of different people to experiment and share their written thoughts without receiving as much toxicity in response from other users.

I wonder how long it will stay that way. 

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.