Meta introduces Threads as a ‘friendly’ alternative to Twitter

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Meta unveiled its long-awaited rival to Twitter on Wednesday, pitched by Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg as a “friendlier” alternative to the struggling social media platform that aims to wrest users and revenue from Elon Musk’s company. Had to attract

The app, called Threads, is a “text-based conversation app” where users are able to publish posts up to 500 characters long, and include links, photos, and videos. Like Twitter, posts can be replied to, liked or shared by others.

The company said Threads is directly integrated with Instagram, Meta’s popular photo sharing platform with more than 2 billion users, and is being offered in more than 100 countries for iOS and Android.

The app’s launch has been dubbed the “Twitter killer” by some users, posing a direct threat to Musk’s platform. Since Twitter was bought by the billionaire in October for $44 billion, it has lurched from crisis to crisis, frustrating users and big advertisers, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

In a post on his Threads account on Wednesday, Zuckerberg, who recently accepted a challenge to fight a “cage match” with Musk, touted Threads as a much better alternative to Twitter.

“The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it is possible and will ultimately be key to its success,” Zuckerberg wrote. “That’s one reason why Twitter has never been as successful as I think it should have been, and we want to do it differently.”

Meta has long battled concerns from academics and activists that it does not adequately monitor its Instagram and Facebook platforms, but over time it has toughened its policies and invested in increased moderation.

In contrast, Musk has relaxed Twitter’s approach to moderation, prompting dozens of advertisers to flee and slashing its $5 billion annual revenue by 50 percent.

Some Twitter users have called for an alternative to the platform against Musk’s moderation stance and the introduction of a premium service for $8 a month with some features that were previously free.

Over the weekend, Musk disappointed some Twitter users when he implemented temporary limits on the number of posts users could see, in what he said was an effort to “address extreme levels of data scraping (and) system manipulation”. Was.

So far, however, new challengers — such as Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Jack Dorsey’s BlueSky and Mastodon — have failed to garner communities large enough to go mainstream.

Meta is known for cloning features offered by rival platforms in its pursuit of growth, most notably when it created “Instagram Stories” – an imitation of the disappearing vertical video clips first popularized by smaller competitor Snap. Had happened. Meta recently created a short-form video format similar to ByteDance-owned TikTok called Reels.

But the particular advantage of Threads is its link to Instagram, which allows users to bring in their existing usernames and followers from the Photos app, giving them an instant network.

However, the app is not initially being launched in the European Union, its second largest market by revenue, due to uncertainty over new regulations in the bloc.

The move escalates a rivalry between two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent billionaires. Last month, Musk wrote on his forum that he was “ready for a cage match” with Zuckerberg, who has recently rebranded himself as a ju-jitsu fan. Zuckerberg appeared to accept the challenge. It is not clear if and when the competition will take place.

In a statement on Wednesday, Meta also said it planned to make Threads compatible with ActivityPub, an open social networking protocol founded by the World Wide Web Consortium. This will mean that users will be able to transfer the following and content present on threads to other apps built on the ActivityPub protocol, including Mastodon and WordPress, in the future.

Meta said, “Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol – we hope that by joining this rapidly growing ecosystem of interoperable services, Threads will help people find their community.” Will do, no matter what app they use.”