Goodbye ThreadIt: Another Area 120 project is being shut down

I’m not joking when I say that I’ve written more posts about Google shutting things down this year than I have about it spinning projects up. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it is the way the company operates. As you’re probably already aware, the tech giant’s in-house incubator called Area 120, which has been responsible for creating some of the most unique and forward-thinking experiences at Google was recently shuttered.

ThreadIt – one of the projects the Area 120 team was working on – was one of its more impressive offerings, and quite honestly, it hinted at the future of Google Meet with its short-form video recorded meeting segments. Basically, it was like video meeting TikToks, for a lack of a better example.

ThreadIt seeks to revolutionize the video meeting space by taking the idea of meeting with others simultaneously and trashing it altogether. That sounds bonkers, I know, but check this out. ThreadIt allows you to record short video clips, title them and then share them with others. Anyone participating in this so-called ‘video meeting’ can then watch the recording, provide feedback or ask questions, and record a video response, in the same manner, to be sent back to you.

All participants can record and or watch clips at whatever time suits their schedule. All of these clips are basically stitched together into one cohesive video that closely represents an actual video meeting, just with the Youtube Chapters approach to separating content.

Anyway, the service will be “turned down” (strange verbiage from Google) on December 19, 2022, and I received an email this morning stating that anyone who was interested in retaining their video clips would need to export them before that date. You can go to Threadit.app and click on your profile image. From there, select “Account”, and “export videos”.

ThreadIt employees are stated to be moving to other areas of Google Workspace to focus on building “immersive, visual collaboration experiences across the platform”. Interestingly, I called this last March by stating that I believed the company’s efforts would be absorbed by Google Meet. At the time, we started seeing many of ThreadIt’s features appearing in Meet, and it looks like I was right.

That’s why I don’t believe that the reveal of ThreadIt at this very particular time in history is by any means coincidental. I think that Google has a ton of impressive and innovative features planned that are meant to make the digital workspace and classroom more intentional and personal. While there has been zero connection between ThreadIt and Google Meet at this time, I want to point out that they’re both video calling platforms, and both are technically owned by Google – oh, and when it comes to Area 120, I have a darn good track record of predicting their trajectory long before they reveal it to the world.

– Me, last March

Anyone who doesn’t export their content before December 19, 2022, will have it deleted forever. Let me know in the comments if you ever used this service, or if you avoided it like the plague because you knew it would get shut down. When it comes to Google, I suppose we’re all Nostradamus, but it’s not really that difficult, right?