News you want to use week 41.

A few weeks ago I wrote on the rumours of Threads, a Close Friends-only messaging experience that opens to the camera with shortcuts for instantly sending specific people photos and videos, and now it is launched globally. Threads offers two brand new features called Status and Auto Status that allow you to manually set an emoji as an away message to show Close Friends what you’re up to, or opt in to letting Instagram select one automatically based on your location, accelerometer and even your phone’s battery level. Threads Status and Auto Status offer conversation starters, contextual clues to why someone might not respond, and opportunities to meet up offline. But importantly, it leaves out a map or any exact location sharing to avoid being creepy and instead focus on what Close Friends are up to — which determines if they can chat or hang out more than where they are.

Read more: 3 min