Shopify has taken over Threads.com, a Sequiuoa-powered alternative to Slack, Threads says on its website. The corporations did not disclose terms of the deal, but said the Threads.com team would join Shopify.
Threads added that after launching Meta’s social network of the same name last 12 months, the startup had “the opportunity to sell our domains.” It’s unclear whether the startup sold the domain name to Meta, Shopify, or anyone else, but the note indicates that if it remained independent, it could have to vary its domain name from Threads. We have contacted all of those corporations and will update this story if we hear back.
Threads.com launched its product in 2019 with $10.5 million in funding. It was dropped at light after Meta launched Threads, its Twitter-like social network. It’s value noting that Meta also had one other product called Threads, an Instagram companion app that launched in 2019 and shut down in 2021.
The Threads.com team said that while Meta’s social network was growing, several corporations approached the startup about acquiring it. Ultimately, he selected Shopify, he says, because of the ability to “tinker at scale.”
“At the same time [when Threads.com was considering selling the domain], several companies contacted us, asking whether we would be open to acquisition. When something like this happened in the past, we politely declined. However, this time it was different,” the company said in a post. “We weren’t too excited about the time it would take to invest in a rebrand, and since mind-warping technological advances have now become a commodity, we were excited to join a place where we could tinker on a large scale.”
Last 12 months, Meta decided to make use of Threads.net because Threads, a business communications startup, already owned Threads.com. However, many customers continued to go to the .com site and even download the startup’s app before realizing it wasn’t the social network they were looking for.
At the time, the Threads.com app was downloaded 880,000 times globally on iOS alone between July 6 and July 12, in line with analytics firm data.ai. And on Android, the app surpassed one million downloads in just a few downloads prior to Meta launching the Threads social network.
“Threads is a powerful word and term native to the Internet,” Co-Founder and CEO of Threads Rousseau’s workwho worked at Facebook for six years, said in a statement released to TechCrunch last 12 months.
“Using threads – across platforms – is the best way to stay connected with your peers [.net]work or [.com]you. Given this, it is no surprise that Meta has selected an influential brand to represent their approach to market building.”
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke welcomed Kazi and his team, but did not explain how he plans to integrate the product with Shopify.