Meta has been experimenting for months with allowing people to cross-post from Instagram and Facebook to Threads, a social networking platform that competes with X (formally known as Twitter). Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature has officially rolled out to all countries where Threads is available.
The new cross-posting feature is part of Meta’s larger goal to make the most of the content people share across their app family. Meta has been doing this for years on Instagram and Facebook, allowing users on both platforms to share Facebook posts to Instagram and vice versa. The company also began using cross-posting in 2023 to automatically show suggested threaded posts on Instagram and Facebook. (You can now turn this option off.)
Connecting Threads more closely to Meta’s broader app ecosystem and billions of users will help further develop the Threads app, which recently surpassed 200 million active users.
How to cross-post Instagram images to a thread
Instagram’s new cross-posting feature, which first rolled out as a test in early May, is an opt-in experience, requiring users to turn on the threaded sharing button when posting an image. When a user cross-posts an Instagram post, the caption becomes the text of the threaded post, and hashtags are converted to plain text.
Users can either use the cross-post option once or set auto-sharing to always cross-post to the thread. This feature is available to all users worldwide on iOS and Android devices. However, there is no option to cross-post Instagram Reels to the thread.
How to cross-post a threaded post to Facebook
The cross-posting thread test began rolling out to Facebook users in late February. Similar to how users can turn on cross-posting options for Instagram, there are new thread options that users can enable when typing a post. At the top, next to options like “Only Me” and “Add Album,” the thread logo should appear as “On” or “Off.”
This feature only applies to text and link posts, not videos. This feature is available on Android, iOS, and in all countries where Threads is available.
What's the point of cross posting?
The ability to cross-post to Threads on Instagram and Facebook streamlines the posting process for content creators, social media managers, and business owners, saving valuable time and effort. Instead of creating different content for each platform, you can reach multiple audiences at the same time with the same post.
However, it’s important to consider whether posting the same content across platforms is the right strategy for a particular post, as it might not translate well. For example, an Instagram post with a bunch of hashtags might look weird on Threads, because it’s displayed as plain text. Threads has tags, but doesn’t use hashes.
