Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Seqiuoa-backed Slack different, Threads mentioned on its web site. The corporations didn’t disclose the phrases of the deal however mentioned that the Threads.com crew will be a part of Shopify.
Threads added that after the launch of Meta’s social community with the identical title final 12 months, the startup had “the opportunity to sell our domains.” It will not be clear if the startup offered the area title to Meta, Shopify, or anybody else, however the observe does point out that it will have needed to rebrand from Threads had it remained unbiased. We have 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 crew mentioned that whereas Meta’s social community was on the rise, just a few corporations approached the startup to amass it. Eventually, it selected Shopify, it mentioned, for the chance “to tinker at scale”.
“Around the same time [when Threads.com was considering selling the domain], a handful of companies approached us, wondering if we would be open to an acquisition. When this happened in the past, we would politely decline. However, this time, things were different,” the corporate mentioned within the submit. “We weren’t that excited about the time it would take to invest in a rebrand, and with mind-warping technological advances now being a commodity, we were excited about joining a place where we could tinker at scale.”
Last 12 months, Meta opted to make use of Threads.internet as a result of Threads, the enterprise communication startup, already owned Threads.com. However, many shoppers nonetheless visited the .com web site and even downloaded the startup’s app earlier than realizing it wasn’t the social community they have been on the lookout for.
According to information from analytics agency information.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 one million lifetime downloads with just some downloads previous to Meta launching its Threads social community.
“Threads is a powerful word and an internet native term,” Threads co-founder and CEO Rousseau Kazi, who labored at Facebook for six years, mentioned in an announcement issued to TechCrunch final 12 months.
“Using threads — on various platforms — is the best way to stay connected with your [.net]work or [.com]pany. Given this, it comes as no surprise that Meta chose a powerful label to represent their take at building the town square.”
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke welcomed Kazi and his crew however didn’t develop on the way it plans to combine the product inside Shopify.
