Meta has acquired the Threads.com domain name, according to a Whois record for the URL updated on September 24th.
A user on a domain-related forum pointed out the transfer, and a separate check of Threads.com’s Whois record by TechCrunch showed that Meta’s Instagram was listed as the registrant.
TechCrunch reached out to Meta to ask whether it plans to migrate its Threads social network to Threads.com, but the company did not immediately respond.
The social networking company launched under the Threads.net URL because Threads.com was owned by a Sequoia-backed Slack alternative startup.
At the time, the team-communications startup said it had received acquisition offers from several companies after Meta launched its social network. In June, Shopify acquired Threads.com for an undisclosed amount.
“Around the same time Threads.com was considering selling the domain, several companies inquired about acquiring us,” the company said in a post on its homepage announcing the acquisition. “In the past, we have politely declined, but this time was different. We were less keen on the time it would take to invest in a rebrand, and we were excited to be part of a place where we could coordinate at scale as incredible technological advances have now become commoditized,” the post explained.
Shopify has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Image credit: WhoIs Records
Threads.com’s app downloads soared around the time Meta launched its social network, and in an interview with TechCrunch last year, Threads.com co-founder and CEO Rousseau Kazi, who previously worked at Facebook, said Threads is “a powerful word, a term that’s specific to the Internet.”
More than a year after its launch, Meta’s Threads has grown to more than 200 million users.
