Meta’s social network that promises to be a ‘rival’ of Twitter – 07/04/2023 – Tech

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, announced the launch of a new social network that should compete with Twitter.

The application, called Threads, will go live on Thursday (6). It’s available for “pre-order” on Apple’s App Store and will link to Instagram.

Screenshots of the app’s main screen show a panel similar to Twitter’s. Meta describes Threads as a “text based conversation app”.

The announcement is the latest chapter in the rivalry between Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk.

Last month, the duo agreed to face each other in the ring in a physical fight. It was unclear, however, whether the two billionaires were joking or serious about that possibility.

“Thank God they are run so sanely,” Musk responded to a tweet announcing the launch of Threads, in an apparent new take on Zuckerberg.

At the same time, Twitter announced this Monday (3) that, starting next month, only users with verified accounts will be able to access TweetDeck, a tool that offers additional features on the social network.

With this, the service will only be available to profiles that have the verified seal due to their relevance on the platform or who subscribe to Twitter Blue, a paid version of the social network that costs BRL 42 per month.

Over the weekend, the multibillionaire had already announced another measure that limits the reading of users’ posts, citing the “extreme levels” of data extraction.

As it turns out, Meta’s Threads app will be a free service – and with no restrictions on the amount of posts each user can read.

“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from today’s hot topics to what’s trending tomorrow,” the App Store description reads.

As a Meta app, Threads also collects data from the user’s cell phone, including information about location, past purchases and browsing history.

Several Twitter-like apps have launched in recent years, such as Truth Social and Donald Trump’s Mastodon.

Another similar app, Bluesky, claimed to have seen “record” traffic on its social network after Musk’s decision to restrict reading posts.

However, Threads may be the biggest threat facing Twitter to date.

Mark Zuckerberg has a history of borrowing ideas from other companies and making them work.

Instagram Reels, for example, is considered by many to be a copy of TikTok, while Stories from the same social network look a lot like Snapchat.

Meta has features to compete with Twitter. Threads will be part of Instagram’s platform, so it will be connected to hundreds of millions of existing accounts and won’t have to start from scratch like other rivals that have tried to compete with Twitter.

While Musk has been praised in some quarters for his commitment to free speech, his actions have also alienated some users.

Zuckerberg hopes to get enough disenchanted users off of Twitter to create a successful alternative.

This text was originally published here.