Today’s tech news live: the latest on Meta’s Twitter killer Threads and more

Keeping up with the latest tech news can be a fun but energy-sapping challenge. Luckily, our new Fast Charge liveblog is here to give you blast of all the latest headlines in minutes, so you can stay on top of today’s stories – including the imminent launch of Meta’s potential Twitter assassin Threads.

The Threads app is expected to officially launch on July 6, according to a new App Store listing, but the web version prematurely went live earlier with Mark Zuckerberg’s first post. Meta has also been hiding little personalized invites in Instagram to get you excited about its “text-based conversation app”. 

Search for ‘Threads’ in the Instagram search bar and you’ll see a little red ticket that you can tap to be taken to a personal invite countdown. But not everyone will be invited to the Threads launch party, with rumors claiming that the app will launch in the US and UK, but not in the EU (more on that below).

Not that Threads has all of the tech news tied up today – we’re also seeing yet more leaked images of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, and rumors suggesting that the iPhone 15 lineup are likely to get some serious battery life upgrades. For all of the latest news on those and more, plug into our feed below for a quick hit of all the breaking tech news today…

Meta’s Threads has gone live (kind of)

The Threads app isn’t due to go live until tomorrow (July 6), but we were given a sneak peek of the interface earlier today. That’s because the web version went live early, seemingly accidentally as it’s no longer available. A small band of influencers and brands were merrily posting away – no problem, Meta, our early invite must have got lost in the post…

I had a quick tinker and it’s, well, a text-based Instagram. You can go into dark mode by clicking the Threads logo at the top. And your options are mainly writing posts, liking posts and replying. But it’s clear this will give Twitter a massive shove when it’s already very off balance – this week we’ve already seen Twitter spring ‘rate limits’ on users with no warning, and put a new version of the popular Tweetdeck behind a paywall. 

This week’s rumblings are the real billionaire cage fight, it seems…