By: Nick Gambino
In the world of warring social media platforms, it’s pretty common for copycats to pop up on the regular. Instagram Reels copied TikTok. Instagram Stories copied Snapchat. Heck, Facebook copied the basic idea of MySpace but just figured out how to do it better.
This week Meta launched a Twitter competitor called Threads. In their first day alone, the new social media platform saw 70 million users sign up and more than 95 million posts.
A large part of its initial success is due to the brilliance of integrating it with Meta-owned Instagram. The new platform is tied to the app. In fact, you need an Instagram account to sign up for Threads. They made it super easy to. The day of launch I got a notification to download Threads as soon as I logged into Instagram. I resisted because the last thing I need is another social account to suck me into my phone.
Threads allows users to post messages that are primarily text-based with a 500-character limit. Like Twitter, you can also post photos and videos and repost and quote posts. With Instagram integration you can crosspost just like you’ve been able to do on Facebook and Instagram.
While this is clearly a direct rival to Twitter, Elon Musk reportedly isn’t going to just roll over and take it. His lawyer Alex Spiro sent a strongly worded letter to Mark Zuckerberg.
“Based on recent reports regarding your recently launched “Threads” app, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (‘Meta’) has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property,” Spiro wrote.
The attorney’s letter goes on to claim that Meta has hired dozens of people who used to work for Twitter and put them to work developing a copycat app using their knowledge of Twitter.
Meanwhile Meta Communications Director Andy Stone stated in a Threads post that “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.” So who knows what’s true here.
The last thing Twitter needs right now is a serious competitor that does exactly what they do. Since Musk acquired the company back in October, Twitter has seen a myriad of issues that has a large swath of users looking for the exit door. What this looks like in terms of actual numbers is unclear, but two things are clear:
- There are a lot of users who are upset with the current trajectory of Twitter.
- Threads had 70 million sign-ups on its first day of launch.
Glean from that what you will.
