Threads is Testing Ephemeral Posts

Meta has started testing ephemeral posts on Threads, its Twitter/X clone. After testing the feature internally, the company has now confirmed to TechCrunch that these disappearing messages are now available for a limited number of Thread users.

“While the company didn’t provide any statement, a spokesperson said this is a new and casual way to share on Threads. It also didn’t disclose if the experiment is region-specific or who could activate such posts,” the TechCrunch report explained.

Ephemeral posts have been popularized many years ago by Snapchat and Instagram, and even Twitter experimented with disappearing messages called “fleets” before Elon Musk acquired the company. However, Threads’ new ephemeral messages are different from the “Stories” that appear in a separate feed in apps like Instragram: They’re just regular posts that disappear after 24 hours.

#Threads is working on temporary posts that last 24 hours ?

ℹ️ Also all replies will be automatically deleted pic.twitter.com/tuZOfny0RQ

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) June 25, 2024

In June, reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi managed to get access to disappearing posts on Threads. Since then, the team added a timer that’s visible to people responding to these posts, and all replies will also disappear when the timer ends.

Threads, which is being developed by the Instagram team, doesn’t have any ads yet, even though Paluzzi recently discovered that the infrastructure for sponsored posts already seems to be present. However, Instagram spokesperson Alec Booker told TechCrunch last week that the company isn’t planning to introduce ads at the moment. “We’re not testing ads in Threads at this time, and there is no immediate timeline for monetization,” the spokesperson said.