Meta is getting serious with its frontal attack on twitter. The internet giant is arguably on the verge of launching a new platform called Threads that would directly compete with Elon Musk’s company. An app for the new service has now appeared in the App Store, where programs for Apple’s iPhone are sold, and it said it could probably be downloaded from this Thursday.
Threads is described as a “text-based entertainment app,” and screenshots suggest the platform will function similarly to Twitter. Apparently, Threads is closely linked to Meta’s popular Instagram service. Meta calls Threads “an Instagram app,” and according to the screenshots, users can log in with their Instagram account. They can also easily follow other users they are already connected to on Instagram.
There has been speculation about a potential Twitter rival for Meta for several months. A few weeks ago it became known that Meta presented the new platform internally at a staff meeting. According to media reports, product manager Chris Cox is said to have described it as “our answer to Twitter”. He also said that it should be kept “sane”, which was understood as a clear dig at Elon Musk. Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October and has since thrown the platform into new controversies with an erratic management style.
Turbulent months under Musk
Twitter has had a turbulent few months under new ownership, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may see this as a good opportunity for his offensive. Musk has radically cut staff, most recently Twitter only had around 1,500 employees, before the sale there were 7,500. The platform has been repeatedly shaken by disruptions. Musk has irritated both advertisers and users with provocative statements and the direction he has set to moderate content on Twitter less strictly.
The New York Times recently wrote that in the five-week period ending in early May, Twitter’s advertising revenue in the US fell 59 percent year-on-year. Many users, in turn, have shown increased interest in switching to other services, which has benefited competing offerings such as Mastodon or Bluesky. None of these other platforms have made a breakthrough on a broad scale yet, but Meta brings significantly more resources to become a serious threaded threat. And Instagram, the platform that threads is launched from, already has more than two billion monthly users.
According to the market research group Insider Intelligence, Twitter recently had just over 360 million monthly users. Given the “fundamental changes” Musk is making, market researchers expect an “exodus” of users this year and next.
