Shopify has acquired Threads.com, a Slack alternative backed by Sequoia, according to a statement on the Threads website. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it was confirmed that the Threads.com team will be joining Shopify.
Threads noted that following the launch of Meta’s social network with the same name last year, the startup had “the opportunity to sell our domains.” It’s unclear whether the domain name was sold to Meta, Shopify, or another party, but the statement suggests that Threads would have needed to rebrand if it had remained independent. We’ve reached out to the relevant companies for comment and will update this story as more information becomes available.
Threads.com debuted its product from stealth mode in 2019 with $10.5 million in funding. The startup gained significant attention after Meta launched its Twitter-like social network, Threads. Interestingly, Meta had another product called Threads, an Instagram companion app, which launched in 2019 and was shut down in 2021.
According to the Threads.com team, as Meta’s social network was gaining traction, several companies approached the startup with acquisition inquiries. Ultimately, they chose Shopify, citing the opportunity “to tinker at scale.”
“Around the same time [when Threads.com was considering selling the domain], a handful of companies approached us, wondering if we would be open to an acquisition. When this happened in the past, we would politely decline. However, this time, things were different,” the company stated. “We weren’t that excited about the time it would take to invest in a rebrand, and with mind-warping technological advances now being a commodity, we were excited about joining a place where we could tinker at scale.”
Last year, Meta opted to use Threads.net because the business communication startup already owned Threads.com. Despite this, many customers still visited the .com website and downloaded the startup’s app, only to realize it wasn’t the social network they were searching for.
According to analytics firm data.ai, Threads.com’s app saw 880,000 downloads globally on iOS between July 6 and July 12. On Android, the app surpassed one million lifetime downloads, with most of those occurring after Meta launched its Threads social network.
“Threads is a powerful word and an internet native term,” Threads co-founder and CEO Rousseau Kazi, who worked at Facebook for six years, said in a statement last year.
“Using threads — on various platforms — is the best way to stay connected with your [.net]work or [.com]pany. Given this, it comes as no surprise that Meta chose a powerful label to represent their take at building the town square.”
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke welcomed Kazi and his team but did not elaborate on how Shopify plans to integrate the product.
