This photo, taken in New York on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, shows the logo for Meta’s new app Themes, right, and Twitter’s. Meta is getting ready to unveil a new app that looks to mimic Twitter – a direct challenge to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
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Richard drawing / AP
This photo, taken in New York on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, shows the logo for Meta’s new app Themes, right, and Twitter’s. Meta is getting ready to unveil a new app that looks to mimic Twitter – a direct challenge to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Richard drawing / AP
Meta announced an app to compete with Twitter on Wednesday, apparently aimed at users looking for an alternative to the social networking platform owned by Elon Musk — and frequently changed. —.
Called Topics, the new offer is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram, which the company says offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates.” and public conversations.”
The app went live shortly after midnight on Wednesday in the UK in the Apple and Google Android app stores in over 100 countries including the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan. Early celebrity users included chef Gordon Ramsay, pop star Shakira, and Mark Hoyle, better known as YouTuber LadBaby.
According to the screenshots provided to the media, users get a Twitter-like microblogging experience, showing that the Meta Platform is prepared to challenge the platform directly after the ownership chaos Musk led to a series of unpopular changes that turned users and advertisers off.
There are buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a “topic” and a counter that shows the number of likes and replies a post has received.
“Our vision is that Threads will be a new app that is more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photos and videos,” the company said.
Posts are limited to 500 characters, more than Twitter’s 280 character threshold, and can include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long.
Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing username and follow the same account on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.
Meta highlights measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram’s community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users.
However, Meta’s new offer has increased concerns about data privacy.
Threads may collect a variety of personal information, including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases, and “sensitive information,” according to the rights disclosure. its data privacy on the App Store.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pointed that out in a sarcastic tweet that reads, “All your Threads belong to us” that includes a revealing screenshot. Musk replied “yes.”
One place where Themes will not be deployed is in the European Union, where there are strict data privacy rules.
Meta has informed Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission that it has no plans to launch the Theme in the 27-country bloc, commission spokesman Graham Doyle said. The Irish watchdog is Meta’s primary privacy regulator for the EU as the company’s regional headquarters are based in Dublin.
While Meta featured the Theme with a listing on Apple’s App Store in the UK earlier this week, it was not able to find it in the French, German, or Dutch versions. The company is working on rolling out the app to more countries but cited regulatory uncertainty for its decision to delay the European launch.
Its success is not guaranteed, analysts say, citing Meta’s track record of starting standalone apps that have since been shut down.
Beyond that, the question is whether it’s the right move for Meta. Tens of thousands of people were laid off over the past year amid a slowdown in the tech industry.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been focus on metaverseinvest tens of billions of dollars in virtual reality concept.
Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, a global market research firm, said meta risk “spreads itself too thinly”. “Meta is working on timing amid Twitter’s extreme frustration. However, the opportunity has been flooded with Twitter alternatives including Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, Post.News, and Hive, all of which are available.” are all competing for Twitter’s market share.”
Even so, Threads could be a new headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion.
He’s made a series of changes that have sparked backlash, the latest being a daily limit on the number of tweets people can see to try to prevent the unauthorized collection of valuable data. He is also now requiring paid verification for users to access the TweetDeck online dashboard.
Musk’s rivalry with Zuckerberg could eventually spill over into real life. In an online exchange, two tech billionaires appear to have agreed to a cage-to-cage showdown, though it’s unclear if they’ll actually make it to the ring.
