Is it a ‘thra’, or ‘ku’, or ‘kra’? Or may be a jalebi? No, it’s the Threads app logo!

To a few others, it was another Malayalam letter — kra. Judge for yourself:

Instagram Threads logo is Malayalam conjunct 'ത്ര' (Thra) , the first conjuct in the word threads , with a 90 degree rotation pic.twitter.com/ohTjXUwFvH

— 𝗔𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗿 𝗔𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗱 (@anivar) July 6, 2023

Is it just me or the logo for threads app looks like the Tamil alphabet for “ku” #iykyk pic.twitter.com/9cSyatHuYC

— Harini Janakiraman (@HariniLabs) July 6, 2023

The Threads logo looks eerily like Kra in Malayalam pic.twitter.com/p6sdpMqAbw

— Charmy Harikrishnan (@charmyh) July 6, 2023

Meanwhile, there exist some people who made claims that the logo resembles the Om symbol.

#Threads' logo looks like a twisted version of Om in Odia pic.twitter.com/7wLnn9RNON

— Aswini Kumar (@as_win5) July 6, 2023

Interestingly, for some users, it appeared like a jalebi.

threads logo looks like jalebi fr! pic.twitter.com/qELl5EBynm

— Suchit Deshmukh (@suchit_d) July 6, 2023

One “conspiracy” tweet on the Threads logo claimed that the logo was made like the Tamil letter “ku” since the Twitter logo is a kuruvi (sparrow in both Malayalam and Tamil).

https://twitter.com/VibeTamizhan/status/1676912623324139521

What is Threads?

“Let’s do this. Welcome to threads,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, in the first post of the app which was launched as a rival to Twitter.

The app, which is available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store, is an extension of Instagram. This means people with Instagram accounts can log in directly to Threads.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri in a tweet said during the launch, “We’re hoping Threads can be a great space for public conversations, and we’re very focused on the creator communities that already enjoy Instagram.”

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg noted that the app takes the “best parts of Instagram” and creates a new experience for texts and ideas.

Currently, users can share text-based posts up to 500 characters long and include pictures, links, and five-minute-long videos.

Also read: Hridayam’s ‘parotta and beef curry scene’ sparks a Twitter spat

Twitter alternatives

Over the years, many websites have been launched to counter Twitter, but none of them succeeded in replacing it.

One among them is the Indian alternative Koo, which gained momentum during the farmers’ protest in Delhi in early 2021.

“Nationalist” Indians started migrating from Twitter to Koo as they accused the US-based platform of helping “anti-nationals” spread “propaganda” against the country.

Koo appeared to be taking truly off in 2021 as it spread its wings abroad. The entire Nigerian government moved to the platform in June of that year after being banned by Twitter.

Koo subsequently spread to other African countries as well.

However, the hype died down as the users slowly moved back to Twitter, deserting the platform. Its founders fired around 30 percent of its employees in April this year.

Some other websites created to rival Twitter were Mastodon, Blusky (founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey), and Truth Social by former US president Donald Trump.

Indian languages, global impact

This is not the first time an Indian language is creating ripples in the tech world with a single character of the alphabet.

In February 2018, the world became aware that sending a single Telugu character as a text message could crash iPhones.

In fact, the bug affected all Apple devices with a certain version of iOS — the company’s proprietary operating system.

This was the conjugated character “gna” or “gya“.

The crashing of the Apple devices obviously sparked a meme-fest online.

The squiggly boi
by u/TBmanray in softwaregore

Apple was quick to release the update iOS 11.2.6 to fix this bug. It came within days of the problem surfacing.

According to the release note for the update, it — among other things — fixed “an issue where using certain character sequences could cause apps to crash”.