TeaThat “cage fight” between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and billionaire Elon Musk may not be on talking terms yet, but this week the digital battle in the virtual world has begun with the launch of the Instagram-linked Threads app. In the first round, at least, Meta Founder seems to be winning.
Meta, which owns social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, launched Threads as an answer to Musk’s Twitter. More than 30 million people signed up within hours of launch, Zuckerberg”threaded“On the new app.
Threads, dubbed the “Twitter killer”, was the top free app on the Apple App Store in the United Kingdom and the United States on the day of its launch. And that’s why it’s ThePrint’s newsmaker of the week.
Read also: Twitter threatens to sue Meta over new Threads platform, citing intellectual property rights
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The Instagram team designed Threads to create a separate space for real-time updates and public conversations. Interestingly, this platform leverages the huge user base of Instagram two billion active users, giving it an instant edge over Twitter, which is estimated To have around 400 million active users.
Here’s what users saw in the first 48 hours after signing up to Threads. You can import your login details from your Instagram profile to sign up and follow the same set of friends and Pages, unlike Twitter where one starts from scratch to create their profile. However, the user interface is very similar to its rival – neat and clean and noisy.
The timing of the app’s launch coincides with a series of sudden changes introduced by Twitter and the platform Declining revenue, which has been dipping Ever since Musk achieved it in October 2022. More recently, Musk announced Twitter will impose a limit on the number of tweets users can read, leaving many on the social media platform upset.
Given the high-octane discussion around the threads, Musk found an opportunity to further fuel the Twitter-meta rivalry – he replied to a 2018 tweet and wrote: “It’s far better to be attacked by strangers on Twitter than to indulge in the false joy of Instagram that hides pain.” Twitter did too bullied to sue Meta, alleging that the company hired its former employees who had and have access to the platform’s trade secrets.
Despite Threads being called Twitter’s biggest rival, it is not a simple copy-paste version of the latter – there are some key differences between the two social media platforms.
One, if you already have an Instagram account then it just takes a few seconds to sign up for Threads. And two, it’s free for all and allows users to share posts up to 500 characters long and up to 5 minutes in duration, including links, photos, and videos.
Currently available in 100 countries, except the European Union (EU), Threads gives users the option to post, repost, and reply or comment on other posts. Many users who downloaded the app hours after its launch were inundated with dozens of follow requests as soon as they logged in.
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From entertainment to news, the threads are getting bigger by the minute. Some of the biggest names have already joined the bandwagon, including billionaire Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath. media houses like ndtv, BBC, Indian Express, And india todayCorporate brands like Netflix and Microsoft have caught on to the trend as well. Musk’s noted absence of Tesla and SpaceX hasn’t gone down well with Threads users.
However, there is no trending story or direct message yet. Although you can’t search for specific topics, you can view user handles.
Users have also expressed some concerns. To begin with, in order to delete your Threads account, you will also need to get rid of your Instagram account, which is discouraged By signing up a few. And perhaps more troubling to many is the amount of user data required for the sign-up process — information related to health, financial and browsing history, according to the App Store. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey also raised concerns about the data access sought by Threads, and Musk was keen to Agree with the former CEO.
But Threads is not the first app to compete with Twitter. German software Mastodon, which launched in 2016, India’s microblogging site Koo, which was released in 2020, and Dorsey’s own BlueSky, which he plans to introduce in 2021 – all tried to topple Twitter, but none succeeded . Although Threads has got a very promising start, we will have to wait to see if it can really beat Twitter.
Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeek)