Meta launches Twitter alternative Threads

This article was last updated on July 6, 2023

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

After a chaotic weekend at Twitter, Meta takes the stage with Threads

After a very chaotic weekend at Twitter, in which users were limited in the number of tweets they see, Meta is now very consciously taking the stage. The company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has launched a competitor to Twitter: Threads. This means Twitter boss Elon Musk has to deal with the biggest competitor to date.

The app, which was officially launched last night, is a derivative of Instagram. You can log in to Threads with an Instagram account to transfer your network to the Twitter competitor in one go. Instead of having to start from scratch, problem for other alternatives.

Instagram has more than two billion monthly active users. In the first seven hours, 10 million accounts have already been created on Threads, reports CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There are also a number of stars active, including the well-known chef Gordon Ramsey (15 million followers on Instagram) and the Brazilian singer Anitta (64 million followers) and news media such as The Economist and The New York Times.

Uncertainty about legislation

It is striking that the app is not yet available in the European Union. This has to do with new rules, the Digital Markets Act, which is aimed at limiting the dominant position of large tech companies such as Meta. The message from the company is that this entails too much uncertainty.

This seems to be specifically about the fact that Meta wants users to ‘take’ their data from Instagram to this new platform. But a tech giant like Meta is not allowed to do that under those new rules.

And that is precisely a crucial point for Meta. Starting a new platform, no matter how big your company is, is extremely complicated. In conversation with The Verge Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, says it’s a “risky adventure” and that it’s more likely to fail than succeed.

Twitter’s most formidable competitor

This makes it abundantly clear that Threads is Twitter’s most formidable competitor right now. But one from the stable of Mark Zuckerberg. His company Meta has a history with privacy scandals. At the start there are no advertisements in the new app, but that is the obvious revenue model if successful.

As if a digital battle between Twitter and Meta wasn’t enough, it’s still hanging a physical battle above the market between Musk and Zuckerberg in the form of a cage fight. Musk started to challenge because of the new app that Meta has now launched. Whether it will actually come to a confrontation is still not certain, The New York Times reported last weekend However, serious preparations are underway.

The copier

Meta has made more attempts to copy apps in recent years. That happened to Snapchat, which was successful with the Stories features. And more recently with TikTok, which is hugely successful with an algorithm-generated infinite amount of short videos. With the copy actions, Meta hoped to prevent an exodus within its own app.

Now Meta hopes to reap the benefits of dissatisfaction among Twitter users, who have often been active on the platform for years. There is an important difference: the two earlier copy campaigns were reactions to relatively new platforms that became very popular in a short time.