Photo: NPR
Formerly known as Facebook, Meta has launched Threads, a text-based rival to Twitter. It already had more than 5 million signups in its first few hours, but its release in Europe has been delayed due to data privacy concerns.
Threads is currently the biggest challenger to date for Elon Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a range of potential competitors emerge, but has yet to replace one of social media’s most iconic companies, despite its epic struggles.
The app is already live and available on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 23:00 GMT. Celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets such as The Washington Post, Reuters, and The Economist already had their accounts active from within the app.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a message to the new platform saying, “Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads.” The app is ad-free for now, and he offered Musk a chance — the pair are known to be bitter rivals and have even offered to meet in a fighting cage to wrestle it out.
Zuckerberg said it might take a while, but he thought there should be a public conversation app with more than 1 billion people on it. Twitter has had a chance to do this, but it hasn’t done it right. Hopefully he will. Not long after, he wrote: “Just passed 5 million signups in the first four hours…”
Introduced as a clear spin-off from Instagram, Threads boasts a built-in audience of over two billion users, saving the new platform the challenge of starting from scratch. Zuckerberg is known for taking advantage of Musk’s chaotic ownership of Twitter to publicize the new product, which Meta hopes will become the primary communication channel for celebrities, businesses and politicians.
Strategic financial analyst Brian Wieser on Substack said, “It’s that simple: if an Instagram user with a large following, like Kardashian or a Bieber or a Messi, starts posting regularly on Threads, a new platform can quickly thrive.” Adam Mosseri, the Instagram chief, told users that Threads was meant to “build an open and friendly platform for conversations. The best thing you can do if you want that too is be friendly.”
At Twitter, content moderation has been reduced with glitches and hasty decisions that scare celebrities and big advertisers. Musk then hired advertising executive Linda Yaccarino to stabilize the ship, but the results of the change have yet to be seen. Recently, the Tesla mogul said he was restricting access to Twitter to deter AI companies from “scraping” the site to train their tech.
Threads owner Meta has a legion of critics who could slow down the site’s development, especially in Europe, despite Instagram’s massive user base.
Meta launches text-based Twitter rival
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