In a curious turn of events, the launch of Instagram's Threads app led to a surge in downloads and web traffic for an unrelated app of the same name. Threads, a Slack alternative that has been available since 2019, experienced a substantial increase in popularity, with over 880,000 downloads on iOS between July 6th and July 12th, as reported by TechCrunch.

Prior to this period, Threads had relatively few downloads, but it quickly climbed to become the 52nd most downloaded app globally on the App Store. Surprisingly, in several European Union countries, including Germany, Spain, and Italy, it even reached the top 10, possibly due to Instagram's Threads not being available in the EU. Meta's efforts to block VPN users from accessing Instagram Threads may have also contributed to the rise in popularity of the unrelated app.

As a result of the coincidental name, Threads (the Slack alternative) has also seen a "significant" increase in traffic to its website, particularly since it owns the domain threads.com. To avoid confusion, the company added a prominent disclaimer on its front page stating it's "not associated with Instagram." The same message can be found on the company's Twitter profile, where they clarify their lack of affiliation with Meta.

While it's not uncommon for companies to share the same branding, the Threads case adds an amusing twist, given that the workplace chat app was co-founded by Rousseau Kazi, a former Facebook product manager. It's worth noting that Meta (formerly Facebook) previously operated an Instagram companion app called Threads, further adding to the intricacy of the situation, showing that originality might be scarce in the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley.