Meta Launches Threads to Compete with Twitter

People who are unhappy with the way businessman Elon Musk has been running Twitter now have a new social media service to consider.

对商人埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 运营 Twitter 的方式不满意的人们现在可以考虑一项新的社交媒体服务。

Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, launched an app called Threads late Wednesday.

拥有 Facebook 和 Instagram 的 Meta 公司周三晚推出了一款名为 Threads 的应用程序。

The app is being called a text version of Instagram, a service mainly for sharing photos and videos. Meta said it will be a place for “real-time updates and public conversations.”

该应用程序被称为 Instagram 的文本版本，主要用于分享照片和视频的服务。 Meta 表示，这将是一个“实时更新和公共对话”的地方。

Some users say it looks similar to Twitter. It is mostly text but permits users to link to their Instagram accounts and to post photos and short videos. Messages can be 500 characters, which is nearly two times longer than Twitter’s 280.

一些用户说它看起来与 Twitter 相似。 它主要是文本，但允许用户链接到他们的 Instagram 帐户并发布照片和短视频。 消息可以有 500 个字符，几乎是 Twitter 280 个字符的两倍。

People who already have an account with Instagram will be able to import the people they follow into the Threads app. Meta’s leader, Mark Zuckerberg, said 10 million people signed up in the first seven hours.

已经拥有 Instagram 帐户的用户将能够将他们关注的人导入到 Threads 应用程序中。 Meta 的负责人马克·扎克伯格表示，前 7 小时内就有 1000 万人注册。

Meta says it wants Threads to be “more focused on text and dialogue,” than photos and videos.

Meta 表示，它希望 Threads“更加关注文本和对话”，而不是照片和视频。

The app is available in 100 countries, including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. The European Union has not approved it yet. People in Britain, India and Lebanon said they had problems seeing some of Zuckerberg’s early messages.

该应用程序在 100 个国家/地区可用，包括美国、英国、澳大利亚、加拿大和日本。 欧盟尚未批准。 英国、印度和黎巴嫩的人们表示，他们在看到扎克伯格的一些早期信息时遇到了问题。

Some of the first users were Gordon Ramsay, a well-known chef and television star from Britain; Shakira, a famous singer from Colombia; and the American actor Jack Black. Businesses also signed up, including Airbnb, Guinness World Records, Netflix and Vogue magazine.

首批用户包括英国著名厨师和电视明星戈登·拉姆齐 (Gordon Ramsay)； 夏奇拉，哥伦比亚著名歌手； 和美国演员杰克·布莱克。 Airbnb、吉尼斯世界纪录、Netflix 和《Vogue》杂志等企业也纷纷加入。

Zuckerberg said he wants to make Threads “a friendly place” which he said would be important to its success. Many Twitter users recently said they were unhappy with some of Musk’s changes, including asking for money for verification and the use of the app called Tweetdeck. He also reduced the number of tweets a user can see in one day.

扎克伯格表示，他希望将 Threads 打造成“一个友好的地方”，这对其成功非常重要。 许多 Twitter 用户最近表示，他们对马斯克的一些改变感到不满，包括索要资金进行验证以及使用名为 Tweetdeck 的应用程序。 他还减少了用户一天可以看到的推文数量。

Musk, the head of the electric car company Tesla and the space exploration company Space-X, purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion.

电动汽车公司特斯拉和太空探索公司 Space-X 的负责人马斯克于 2022 年以 440 亿美元收购了 Twitter。

Some internet experts expressed concern that Meta and Zuckerberg were taking on too much responsibility by launching Threads. The company is already spending money to build its “metaverse” and laid off thousands of people in the past year because of decreasing profits.

一些互联网专家担心 Meta 和扎克伯格通过推出 Threads 承担了太多责任。 该公司已经在花钱建立“元宇宙”，并在过去一年因利润下降而解雇了数千人。

Others, including Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, said there could be privacy problems with Threads if users permit the app to collect too much information.

其他人，包括马斯克和 Twitter 联合创始人杰克·多尔西 (Jack Dorsey) 表示，如果用户允许 Threads 收集过多信息，该应用程序可能会出现隐私问题。

The app’s privacy statement says it could collect personal data including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, as well as other kinds of “sensitive information.”

该应用程序的隐私声明称，它可以收集个人数据，包括健康、财务、联系人、浏览和搜索历史记录，以及其他类型的“敏感信息”。