Meta X’s competitor, Threads, is introducing a new “disappearing posts” feature that will allow the app’s 400 million-plus monthly users to share their thoughts and engage in conversations that are automatically archived after 24 hours.
The option, called “ghost posts,” is rolling out Monday to Threads users worldwide.
Users will now be able to create a ghost post on mobile devices by toggling the new “ghost” icon on the app’s composition screen. When the post is published, it appears on other people’s timelines with a dotted chat bubble around it to differentiate the post from other content.
Other users on both desktop and mobile devices can reply to the post, but those replies are sent directly to the poster’s DMs (direct messages). these responses do not appear in the timeline.
Below the post, people can see if others have liked and replied to the ghost post, indicated by smiley icons. However, only posters can see the actual number of likes and replies, and who engaged.
After 24 hours, posts disappear from the timeline, but are still available to the original poster from the “archive” section, accessed from the main settings menu.
(Note: If you have message requests turned off, people you don’t follow won’t be able to reply to your ghost posts. If message requests are turned on, any replies from people you don’t follow go to your message request inbox. You can adjust these settings from the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of your profile.)
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Parent company Meta told TechCrunch that the feature was designed to encourage low-stakes in-stream sharing.
The addition could also give Threads a new way to challenge Elon Musk’s X, where users today have to opt for third-party services, often for a fee, to delete their old tweets if they don’t want to do a lot of manual work.
This isn’t the first time a text-first social network has tried ephemeral posts. Before X, Twitter experimented with this sharing format in 2020 with Fleets, which appeared as disappearing stories. However, the company pulled the feature the following year, citing 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 expects people to be encouraged to share more of their unfiltered thoughts, participate in live threads, or try other kinds of experimental content through ghost posts.
The tech giant has been rapidly iterating on Threads since its launch in July 2023, rolling out features like custom feeds, DMs, cross-genre sharing (which connects Threads to open social networks like Mastodon) and, most recently, support for up to 10,000 characters via text attachments, interest hiding tools, and launch tools spoi.
