‘This is Elon’s biggest threat’: Mark Zuckerberg will launch Twitter rival Threads within DAYS as Facebook boss seizes on chaos sparked by Musk after Tesla billionaire took over app
Facebook owner Meta is launching a new app to rival Twitter this week, in the latest chapter in the rivalry between tech tycoons Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
The app called ‘Threads’ will be linked to Instagram, and is available for pre-order in app stores on iPhone and Android phones before it goes live this Thursday.
Listed as ‘Threads, an Instagram app,’ it is described on Apple’s app store as ‘Instagram’s text-based conversation app… where communities come together’.
Experts said Threads represents the ‘biggest threat that Elon Musk has faced so far’.
The BBC’s North American technology reporter James Clayton told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘It looks almost identical to Twitter in pretty much every way.
Listed as ‘Threads, an Instagram app,’ it is now available for pre-order on Apple’s app store
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced in mid-March that it was working on a new social network
It comes amid a period of uncertainty at Twitter since Elon Musk took over in October
‘I think the one way that is very different to Twitter is that this is connected to Instagram. I’ve been speaking to Meta sources for the last few months, it’s come out of Instagram, it very much has access to hundreds of millions of Instagram accounts.
‘And so this isn’t just starting from zero like many of Twitter’s other competitors. It has that huge treasure trove of users in Instagram, so that’s why journalists like me and others are quite excited by this, because it does have the potential to become hugely impactful to Twitter. This is by far the biggest threat that Elon Musk has faced so far.’
It comes as the rivalry between Mr Zuckerberg and the Tesla billionaire, who bought Twitter in October, continues.
Last month the pair – two of the world’s most high-profile billionaires – agreed to take each other on in a cage fight in an exchange that went viral on social media.
Thread’s launch comes after a period of uncertainty at Twitter since Mr Musk took over in October, with the billionaire restructuring the company, firing thousands and placing many features behind a subscription paywall.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced in mid-March that it was working on a new social network whose description made it a potential competitor to Twitter.
Threads will enable users to ‘connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things – or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world,’ according to its app store description.
‘We’re thinking about a decentralised, independent social network for sharing written messages in real time,’ the group said in a statement.
The arrival of the new app comes after Twitter announced TweetDeck is to become the next part of the company to be limited to users who have paid for verified status.
The application, which allows users to manage multiple feeds and searches, will only by accessible to verified users in 30 days, according to a tweet from Twitter Support yesterday evening.
A new version of TweetDeck has been made available with the tweet giving instructions to update.
The announcement follows Mr Musk saying two days earlier that users were being limited to reading 600 posts a day.
He said the limit, which had been introduced ‘to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation’, had been increased to 1,000 later on Saturday.
The restrictions could result in users being locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets.
Verified users – who have paid for a subscription to Twitter Blue or are considered ‘notable’ – can read up to 10,000 posts daily after initially being limited to 6,000.
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