Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter-like app “Threads” is reportedly set to launch on Thursday in a move that will escalate the Meta boss’s growing feud with embattled tech billionaire Elon Musk.
A listing for Threads within Apple’s App Store indicated that the app will be closely tied to Meta-owned Instagram, with users able to keep their same username and retain their followers. The app is currently available for pre-order with an “expected” July 6 debut.
Threads is set to directly compete with Twitter, which faced a fresh round of criticism this week over Musk’s decision to temporarily limit the number of tweets users could see per day.
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” the app listing said.
Meta’s plan to launch a Twitter clone has clearly rankled Musk, 52, who challenged Zuckerberg to a cage match last month as word of the company’s plan spread.
One Meta executive told employees at a recent meeting that Threads would be “sanely run,” in contrast to Musk-led Twitter.
Musk mocked Meta’s Threads app on Monday night after user Mario Nawfal shared a post detailing a list of user data that the app would purportedly collect, ranging from purchases to search history and beyond.
“Thank goodness they’re so sanely run,” Musk joked.
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, also publicly criticized Meta’s plans while sharing a screenshot which detailed Threads’ user privacy.
“All your Threads are belong to us,” Dorsey tweeted. Musk later chimed in to say he agreed with Dorsey’s tweet.
The Meta app’s launch is another headache for Twitter, which has been hampered by sagging revenue, regular service outages and an exodus of advertisers since Musk bought the app for $44 billion last year.
Meta did not immediately return a request for comment. In April, Meta said more than three billion people were using at least one of its social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – each day.
Threads isn’t the only Twitter rival to gain steam in recent days.
Bluesky, a new social media startup backed by Dorsey, saw its traffic in record highs this week after Musk announced the Twitter rate limits.
Musk claimed the rate limits were necessary to address “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation” on Twitter.
He added that the company was “getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading the user experience.”
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