In recent months, we had heard rumours that Meta was now working on a Twitter competitor, which would be tied to Instagram in some form. This week, Zuckerberg's latest social media platform, Threads, officially launched – it is indeed very similar to Twitter, so Elon Musk is suing.
Threads officially became available to the world this week and tens of millions of users flocked right to the new platform. Early reports around day-one sign-ups are still coming in but right now, the consensus is that roughly 50 million users signed up for Threads on its first day. Currently, Threads is only available as a mobile app, although public accounts can be browsed from the web.
The launch of Threads has irked Elon Musk, who promptly filed a lawsuit against Meta alleging the theft of trade secrets and misappropriation of intellectual property. The lawsuit alleges that Meta hired former Twitter staff and used their knowledge to fast-track a Twitter clone to market. On Threads, Meta Comms lead, Andy Stone, addressed this, saying that nobody on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.
With all of that said, Zuckerberg hasn't been shy about Threads and its position as a direct competitor to Twitter. On the day of the app's launch, Zuckerberg took to Twitter to post the following:
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
As you might anticipate from a Zuckerberg-led social media platform, there are already some concerns about the amount of data Threads requests from your iOS and Android devices.
Whether or not Threads can maintain its momentum remains to be seen. While we may disagree with some of the chances Musk has introduced to Twitter, the app is still currently more feature-rich compared to Threads, but that is an issue that can be solved with time. We'll also have to wait and see what happens with Musk's lawsuit against Twitter.
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KitGuru Says: If you've jumped on the Threads bandwagon already and want tech and gaming news updates, be sure to follow us over there @kitguru_tech.