Meta-owned social network Threads said today that it will make its API broadly available to developers by June.
Engineer Jesse Chen posted that the company has been building the API for the past few months. The API currently allows users to authenticate, publish threads and fetch the content they post through these tools.
“Over the past few months, we’ve been building the Threads API to enable creators, developers, and brands to manage their Threads presence at scale and easily share fresh, new ideas with their communities from their favorite third-party applications,” he said.
Chen added that the company is working with a limited number of partners, including social tools like Sprinklr, Sprout Social, Social News Desk, Hootsuite, tech news board Techmeme and a few other developers.
The engineer added that Threads is looking to add more capabilities to APIs for moderation and insights gathering.
Last October, Instagram head Adam Mosseri first confirmed that the social platform is working on an API to enable third-party experiences. At that time Chen had added that the company would start working on a content publishing endpoint. While the social network has added new capabilities to the API, it’s not clear if this will allow developers to build third-party clients to create a different way to experience Threads.
Over the years, social networks have increased restrictions around access to user data for developers. This has stifled the third-party app ecosystem built for social platforms.
Decentralized social networks such as Bluesky and Mastodon have allowed developers to create new apps. However, they have yet to reach the massive scale of the likes of Twitter/X, Reddit and Meta’s properties like Facebook and Instagram.
While Meta has committed to adopting ActivityPub protocol for Threads and joining the fediverse, the company hasn’t spoken openly about allowing developers to build alternative Threads clients.
