On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg plans to go live with “Threads,” a rival app to Twitter, which will be linked to Instagram.
The Facebook CEO is attempting to cash in on the disenfranchised with what is being labeled the “Twitter Killer.”
Last week, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced a limit on how many posts an account holder can read daily which has caused an avalanche of serious complaints with Twitter users. Verified users can view up to 10,000 posts a day compared to 1,000 views by those that are non-verified.
By building off of already established Instagram accounts, Thread users can link directly to the Twitter like chat without having to start a new account and build up followers, which some say has always given Twitter the advantage.
BBC technology reporter, James Clayton, told Radio 4’s Today program: “It looks almost identical to Twitter in pretty much every way.
“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.”
Other experts have weighed in:
‘I do think a new microblogging leader will emerge to supplant Twitter, but it is far from a foregone conclusion that the winner will be Meta,’ Steve Teixeira, Mozilla chief product officer said.
Former Instagram executive Meghana Dhar is impressed with META’s launch, saying, ‘I’ve seen Meta do a very good job of picking up business models or product features and copy-pasting. Haters are going to say that they lack innovation, but I actually think this is smart.”
As seen in the Daily Mail, screenshots from the Apple App Store show that Threads looks a lot like Twitter, though Instagram users can post directly from their accounts. Instagram sees 500 million users daily, worldwide, so Threads could possibly be Twitter’s greatest threat so far, though that remains to be seen.
In a bizarre twist, the two billionaires agreed to an actual cage fight last month, with Elon’s mother, Maye, weighing in by tweeting that she has canceled the fight.
Get more popcorn, folks! In the ring or out, this is going to be one hell of a showdown!
