Threads adds ‘ghost posts’ that disappear after 24 hours

Meta’s X competitor, Threads, is Introduction A new “disappearing post” feature that will allow the app’s more than 400 million monthly users to share their thoughts and engage in conversations that are automatically archived 24 hours later.

The option, called “ghost posts,” will be rolled out to Thread users worldwide on Monday.

Users will now be able to create a ghost post on mobile devices by toggling the new “ghost” icon on the app’s compose screen. When the post is published, it appears in others’ timelines with a dotted conversation bubble around it to distinguish the post from other content.

Other users on both desktop and mobile devices can reply to posts, but these responses are sent directly to the poster’s DM (direct message); This answer does not appear in the timeline.

Below the post, people can see whether others have liked and replied to the ghost post, indicated by a smiley-faced icon. But only posters can see the actual number of likes and replies and who is involved.

After 24 hours, the posts disappear from the timeline, but are still available to the original poster from the “Archived” section accessed from the main settings menu.

(Note: If you’ve turned off message requests, people you don’t follow can’t reply to your ghost posts. If message requests are enabled, any replies from people you don’t follow go to your message request inbox instead. You can adjust these settings from the drop-down menu in the top right of your profile.)

Parent company Meta told TechCrunch that the feature is designed to encourage more low-stakes sharing within feeds.

The addition could also give Threads a new way to challenge Elon Musk’s X, where users today have to opt for third-party, often paid services if they don’t want to do a lot of manual labor to delete their old tweets.

This isn’t the first time a text-first social network has tried ephemeral posts Before X, Twitter experimented with this form of sharing in 2020 including the fleetWhat has emerged as a disappearing story. However, the company pulled the feature next yearCiting a lack of adoption.

Meta, meanwhile, believes there’s still potential for content to disappear — something that’s worked well for Instagram and Facebook Stories, for example. In Threads, the company says it hopes people will be encouraged to share their unfiltered thoughts, engage in live threading, or try other types of experimental content through ghost posts.

The tech giant is quickly iterating on the thread Its July 2023 launchsuch as rolling out features Custom feedDM, Fediverse Sharing (which connects threads to open social networks like Mastodon), and recently, Support up to 10,000 characters Text attachment, via tool Hide spoilersAnd Introduction of interest-based communities.