The Threads app homepage.
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Threads is fun.
That long string of numbers now attached to our Instagram profile, however, is not.
Surely, Zuck has a backup plan! Some help here, Mark?
Hey, Zuck, a little help here.
Meta launched Threads on Wednesday, its long-rumored rival to Twitter. One bit of beef I have with the app, however, has its roots in how it’s affected my Instagram account.
Call me shallow, but that super long @ that’s been added to my Instagram profile, right under my username? That weird string of digits that reminds me of Jean Valjean’s “Prisoner 24601” label from “Les Misérables?” Yeah, I’m not a big fan of that.
Mark Zuckerberg has no such problem. Zuck, you see, is @1 on Threads. Snazzy. But, sure, I understand — we can’t all be the big boss of Meta.
A screengrab of Mark Zuckerberg’s @1 Threads handle on Instagram.
Screengrab/Instagram
No such luck for Insider. We made it to @2328. Close enough?
That said, this feels like a small quibble in the big scheme of things — the new Threads app is fun. It adds to a slate of services in the Meta ecosystem that we already use. Our friends are there, ready for us to follow them with the click of a button.
And for now, I prefer it to a social media app that’s prone to crashing, whose owner has seen fit to impose a rate limit on how many tweets can be viewed.
I think we can make “Threading” happen. But please fix that @, Zuck. We can do better than labeling each other with strings of digits.