Allowing users to cross-post from Facebook and Instagram to Threads, Meta’s social networking platform that rivals X (formerly known as Twitter), has been an experimental feature for the company for several months. TechCrunch was informed by Meta that the feature has now been formally rolled out worldwide to all places where Threads is accessible.
With the introduction of the cross-posting feature, Meta hopes to maximize the value of information shared across its app family. For years, Meta has enabled users who are active on both Facebook and Instagram to share posts from Facebook to Instagram and vice versa. In 2023, the firm experimented with cross-posting by automatically displaying suggested Threads posts on Facebook and Instagram.
Enhancing Threads’ app—which recently topped 200 million active users—might also be possible by bringing it closer to Meta’s billion-user app ecosystem.
Instagram users must toggle on the Threads sharing button when submitting an image in order to access the new cross-posting capability, which went live as a test in early May. When users cross-post their Instagram photos to Threads, hashtags turn into plain text and the Instagram caption becomes text.
Users have the ability to cross-post to Threads automatically or only once by configuring automatic sharing. Users of iOS and Android devices worldwide can access this service. Nevertheless, there isn’t a way to share Instagram Reels to Threads simultaneously.
Tests of Facebook users cross-posting threads began in late February. When typing a post, users can enable a new option called Threads, just like they can enable Instagram cross-posting. The Threads logo should be displayed at the top, with the options “Only Me” and “Add an Album” adjacent to it. Users can choose to toggle this logo on or off.
