Threads To Make API Broadly Available By June

Meta-owned social network Threads has announced that it will be making its API widely accessible to developers by June. This move is aimed at enabling creators, developers, and brands to manage their Threads presence at scale and easily share new ideas with their communities from their favorite third-party applications.

Building the Threads API

Engineer Jesse Chen revealed that the company has been diligently working on the API for the past few months. The current version of the API allows users to authenticate, publish threads, and retrieve the content they have posted through these tools.

Expanding Capabilities

Chen also mentioned that Threads is collaborating with a select group of partners, including social tools like Sprinklr, Sprout Social, Social News Desk, Hootsuite, and tech news board Techmeme, along with a few other developers. The company is looking to further enhance the API’s capabilities for moderation and insights gathering.

Industry Response

Meta’s decision to work on an API for Threads was first confirmed by Instagram head Adam Mosseri last October. While the social platform has added new capabilities to the API, it remains unclear whether this will allow developers to build third-party clients to create a different way to experience Threads.

Challenges for Third-Party Developers

Over the years, social networks have imposed increasingly stringent restrictions on access to user data for developers, impacting the third-party app ecosystem built for social platforms. This has led to a growing need for decentralized social networks, such as Bluesky and Mastodon, which have allowed developers to create new apps but have yet to reach the massive scale of major social platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Meta’s properties.