Threads provides ‘ghost posts’ that disappear after 24 hours | TechCrunch

Meta’s X competitor, Threads, is introducing a brand new “disappearing posts” characteristic that can permit the app’s over 400 million month-to-month customers to share their ideas and interact in conversations which can be mechanically archived after 24 hours.

The choice, dubbed “ghost posts,” launches on Monday for Threads customers worldwide.

Customers will now be capable to create a ghost put up on cell units by toggling on the brand new “ghost” icon on the app’s compose display screen. When the put up is revealed, it seems in others’ timelines with a dotted dialog bubble round it to distinguish the put up from different content material.

Different customers on each desktop and cell units can reply to the put up, however these responses are despatched on to the poster’s DMs (direct messages); these replies don’t seem within the timeline.

Beneath the put up, individuals can see if others have preferred and replied to the ghost put up, which is indicated by smiley-faced icons. However solely posters can see the precise variety of likes and replies, and who engaged.

After 24 hours, the posts disappear from the timeline, however are nonetheless out there to the unique poster from the “archived” part, accessed from the principle settings menu.

(Observe: If you happen to’ve turned off message requests, individuals you don’t comply with gained’t be capable to reply to your ghost posts. If message requests are enabled, any replies from individuals you don’t comply with go to your message request inbox as a substitute. You possibly can alter these settings from the drop-down menu within the prime proper of your profile.)

Mum or dad firm Meta instructed TechCrunch the characteristic was designed to encourage extra low-stakes sharing throughout the feed.

The addition may additionally give Threads a brand new approach to problem Elon Musk’s X, the place customers at the moment must go for third-party, usually paid companies to delete their previous tweets in the event that they don’t need to do plenty of handbook labor.

This isn’t the primary time a text-first social community has tried ephemeral posts. Earlier than it was X, Twitter experimented with this type of sharing again in 2020 with Fleets, which appeared as disappearing Tales. Nevertheless, the corporate pulled the characteristic the next 12 months, citing a scarcity of adoption.

Meta, in the meantime, believes there’s nonetheless potential in disappearing content material — one thing that has labored nicely for Tales on Instagram and Fb, as an illustration. On Threads, the corporate says it expects individuals shall be inspired to share extra of their unfiltered ideas, have interaction in dwell threading, or strive different kinds of experimental content material through ghost posts.

The tech big has been quickly iterating on Threads since its July 2023 launch, rolling out options like customized feeds, DMs, fediverse sharing (which connects Threads to open social networks like Mastodon), and, extra lately, help for as much as 10,000 characters via textual content attachments, instruments to disguise spoilers, and the launch of interest-based communities.