Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Seqiuoa-backed Slack various, Threads mentioned on its web site. The businesses didn’t disclose the phrases of the deal however mentioned that the Threads.com staff will be part of Shopify.
Threads added that after the launch of Meta’s social community with the identical title final yr, the startup had “the chance to promote our domains.” It isn’t clear if the startup offered the area title to Meta, Shopify, or anybody else, however the word does point out that it will have needed to rebrand from Threads had it remained unbiased. We’ve reached out to all these corporations, and we’ll replace the story if we hear again.
Threads.com launched its product from stealth in 2019 with $10.5 million in funding. It was thrown into the limelight after Meta launched Threads, its Twitter-like social community. Notably, Meta additionally had one other product named Threads, an Instagram companion app that began in 2019 and was shut down in 2021.
Threads.com’s staff mentioned that whereas Meta’s social community was on the rise, a number of corporations approached the startup to amass it. Finally, it selected Shopify, it mentioned, for the chance “to tinker at scale”.
“Across the identical time [when Threads.com was considering selling the domain], a handful of corporations approached us, questioning if we’d be open to an acquisition. When this occurred up to now, we’d politely decline. Nevertheless, this time, issues had been totally different,” the corporate mentioned within the put up. “We weren’t that excited concerning the time it will take to put money into a rebrand, and with mind-warping technological advances now being a commodity, we had been enthusiastic about becoming a member of a spot the place we may tinker at scale.”
Final yr, Meta opted to make use of Threads.internet as a result of Threads, the enterprise communication startup, already owned Threads.com. Nevertheless, many purchasers nonetheless visited the .com web site and even downloaded the startup’s app earlier than realizing it wasn’t the social community they had been searching for.
In line with knowledge from analytics agency knowledge.ai on the time, Threads.com’s app noticed 880,000 downloads globally on iOS alone between July 6 and July 12. And on Android the app crossed the mark of 1,000,000 lifetime downloads with just some downloads previous to Meta launching its Threads social community.
“Threads is a robust phrase and an web native time period,” Threads co-founder and CEO Rousseau Kazi, who labored at Fb for six years, mentioned in an announcement issued to TechCrunch final yr.
“Utilizing threads — on numerous platforms — is one of the best ways to remain related together with your [.net]work or [.com]pany. Given this, it comes as no shock that Meta selected a robust label to signify their take at constructing the city sq..”
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke welcomed Kazi and his staff however didn’t broaden on the way it plans to combine the product inside Shopify.
