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Meta’s Twitter Rival Threads Will Launch Thursday As Chaos Continues On Elon Musk’s Platform
Jul
Meta’s Twitter Rival Threads Will Launch Thursday As Chaos Continues On Elon Musk’s Platform
Topline
Facebook and WhatsApp parent Meta will launch the firm’s long awaited competitor to Twitter, Instagram Threads, on Thursday, escalating the non-public rivalry between feuding billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and firmly throwing down the gauntlet after one other chaotic weekend had the platform’s users trying to find alternatives.
Threads will launch Thursday.
The Key Facts
Meta’s app, Threads, is listed as “coming soon” on Apple’s App Store and is on the market for pre-order.
The listing said Threads is “expected July 6” and Meta’s countdown website for the launch indicates the app will go live at 10 a.m. ET (7 a.m. PT), though it’s unclear whether Meta plans to stagger the rollout not directly.
Details on the complete nature of Threads are scarce however the listing describes the platform as a “text-based conversation app” and screenshots show a dashboard that appears very much like Twitter’s app, with the power to love, share, post and repost content.
Threads will probably be directly linked to Meta’s popular photo sharing platform Instagram and screenshots suggest users can keep their usernames and simply follow the identical accounts they do on Instagram on the brand new platform.
From the listing, Threads looks prone to be a free service in exchange for private data, a model in step with a lot of Meta’s other popular apps and other free online services.
App Store listings states that Instagram Threads requires users to be over 12 years of age.
What We Don’t Know
It’s not clear when Threads will probably be launched on Android systems or whether the network will probably be accessible without the app. An analogous listing of Threads reportedly appeared on the Google Play store—which serves Android devices—on Saturday showing similar features, images and descriptions. It was quickly removed. The posting, which didn’t list a date of release, gave the impression to be an error.
News Peg
Meta’s release of a product to rival Twitter is each timely and expected. Meta, formerly Facebook, has a well documented history of lifting features from competitors—its short-form video feature Reels draws from TikTok, community chats from Discord and disappearing video and photo feature Stories from Snapchat—to various degrees of success. Twitter is an obvious goal, with many users keen to leap ship given the parade of controversy and repair issues that has followed Elon Musk’s takeover last 12 months, including drastic revisions to longstanding verification and content moderation policies, cutting company headcount to the bone, changes to who can access platform data and diverse system outages. Most recently, Musk limited the variety of posts users—even paying users—could see on Twitter and required users to have registered for accounts to view tweets. With each latest development, rivals like Bluesky, Trump’s Truth Social and Mastodon have benefited handsomely, though none have yet managed to realize the type of traction needed to completely tackle a longtime social media giant like Twitter. With its vast resources and established social networks, Threads’ arrival could pose a serious threat to Twitter.
SME Valuation
$101.5 billion. That’s how much SMEMark Zuckerberg’s estimated price is shown by our live tracker. Zuckerberg’s fortune is basically derived from his stake in Meta and it makes him the tenth richest person on this planet. Musk’s estimated net price is $249,4 billion. He currently occupies the primary position. SME’ list of the world’s wealthiest people. The billionaires have been fighting for several years. Nonetheless, their feud only recently broke out within the open and now they’re able to do battle. It’s unclear whether the agreed upon “cage match” will ever occur.
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Behind the Musk-Zuckerberg ‘Cage Match’ Is a Yearslong Billionaire Feud (WSJ)
