Meta wants to compete with Twitter with the Threads app
It is of course nothing new that another company makes an attempt to knock a competitor out of the leading position. Potential competitors for Twitter have come and gone for as long as the platform has been dominant. Yet since Musk has thrown the bat in the Twitter coop with his acquisition, there seems to be a bit more enthusiasm. Earlier we reported about Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and his app. Today it is Meta (Facebook’s pseudonym) that makes an attempt.
Musk vs the Zuck
Last week there was talk of a cage fight between Musk and Zuckerberg. Now the battle is moving back to the digital playing field. That cage fight was also canceled because Musk’s mom didn’t want to know anything about it. It shouldn’t be surprising if nothing but business interests are behind Meta’s latest move. Yet it is very tempting to observe a budding rivalry in the whole.
The rival app is called Threads and has been available for download on the App Store since July 6, at least in the US. The description in the app store shows that it is an app with many comparisons to Twitter. On Threads you can talk to other users, collect followers and connect with like-minded people. “Threads is where communities come together to talk about everything, the things that matter to you today and what will be trending tomorrow.” Follow creators, talk to people who share your interests, build your own following and share your creativity with the world. It’s all possible on Threads, but it’s been possible on Twitter for a long time.
Concepts that try to compete directly with the ‘top dog’ in the field are usually doomed to fail. New products with a fresh perspective are nice, but ultimately you’re on social media to connect with people, and where are all those people in this case? Well, mainly on Twitter. The most predictable example of this phenomenon is the MMO war, which seems to be over by now. Year after year a new MMO came out, but the masses have always stayed with WoW. Simple, that’s where most of your friends were and you had the most stuff.
Complete chaos at Twitter
Of course, that doesn’t mean it can never work. If there’s a time when a new app can rival Twitter, it’s now. The riots that have made the news since the Musk takeover are legion. Most recently, it was about the limits that Musk announced for reading Tweets. Blue check marks can now only read 6,000 posts per day, according to a Tweet from Musk. Accounts without verification only 600 and new accounts without verification only 300. In a later Tweet, the numbers were adjusted again. I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers change again in the future, nothing is set in stone at Musk, but the fuss was fierce.
Twitter users expressed their frustration in a variety of ways, including the trending hashtag “Thanks Elon.” For non-users, it becomes even more difficult to view Twitter content. Although it must remain possible to continue to see Tweets that are shown in a news article, for example, without being logged in to Twitter. According to Musk, the measures serve to prevent the ‘scraping’ of data from the platform. For example, by the developers of “AI” technology who often plunder the internet without permission.
That the new measures were announced by Musk himself on his private Twitter will not make investors and advertisers happy. Musk previously appointed Linda Yaccarino as CEO in an effort to re-establish the company’s reputation in the eyes of advertisers. Such actions by Musk suggest what many have already indicated, that Musk still controls the company and that Yaccarino is mainly for decoration. For now, Musk’s actions will only continue to damage the company’s image. When it became possible to upload videos of 2 hours long, users immediately abused it. For example, people put entire films on Twitter, but the rights holders of those films were obviously not happy about it.
Meta lacks consumer confidence
Still, if anyone is going to steal Twitter’s crown, it’s probably not Meta. The company got rid of the name Facebook in the hope that negative publicity would also disappear. This action followed the major Cambridge Analytica scandal that revealed Facebook was complicit in the massive misuse of users’ personal data. However, such scandals are dwarfed by the role Facebook has played in sparking appalling communal violence in Myanmar.
But it seems that trust in Meta has only slipped further since the name change. It can therefore be concluded that the average internet user is more likely to put his hand in a bear trap than to download a Meta app. But who knows, consumer memory may turn out to be short and we’ll all be on Threads in a year’s time. For now, though, it’s clear that, love it or hate it, Musk’s Twitter is the only real option in its class.
