Zuckerberg challenges Musk: here is Threads, the rival of Twitter
(Teleborsa) – One “space for live updates and public conversations” which is based on users’ Instagram credentials. this is how Meta, the giant owner of Facebook and Instagram, officially describes Threads, the rival of Twitter. It is the biggest threat to the proprietary platform Elon Musk.
“Let’s do it. Welcome to Threads,” wrote Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in his first post on the fledgling platform.
Ten million subscribers
And Meta’s new social network had ten million subscribers in the first seven hours after launch. Zuckerberg himself had previously given the first results. “We just surpassed 5 million signups in the first four hours,” the head of Meta wrote on his official Threads account.
Twitter’s new rival platform looks like the text version of Instagram. It arrives in 100 countries around the world, but not in Europe, and is compatible with both Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iOS. At the moment, the launch in Europe – which for Meta is the second market – is postponed due to regulatory problems mainly related to user privacy.
The Twitter Crisis
Threads supports text messages of up to 500 characters, photos and videos up to five minutes. Threads will also support reposts – like retweets – as well as posts with mentions. Users can also limit their replies, block and report other users. And Thread posts can be easily shared as Stories on Instagram.
It’s not the first time that Meta has tried to replicate patterns of other social networks. It had already happened with Instagram stories, which replicate Snapchat’s “disappearing” mechanism. And more recently with Reels, short videos on the TikTok model. The difference in this case is the deep crisis that rival Twitter is going through. After being bought last October by Elon Musk for 44 billion, the platform goes from crisis to crisis and has to deal with criticism from users and large advertisers.