Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone Threads is live. Here’s what we love and hate about it.

Meta bent over backward to tell us Threads is not a Twitter clone. “Threads is a new app that’s focused on text and dialogue. And the way that we think about this is we’re modeling it after what Instagram has done for photo and video,” said Connor Hayes, a Meta product vice president.

But in many ways, Threads works exactly like Twitter. It’s primarily oriented around text conversations, and your posts — called “threads” — are limited to 500 characters each. You mention other people in threads by using the @ symbol in front of their username, and can reply to someone else’s posts. You can also quote or retweet — erm, “repost” — someone else’s threads by clicking a button. (So should we call a thread of threads … a knit?)

What’s different from Twitter? There’s no separate direct messaging function at launch. And you have a bit more control over the audience who can see what you post.