By Adaobi Rhema Oguejiofor
Choose to call it competition, rivalry, or plain copy-cat, but Meta, a company co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg, officially launched a Twitter-like messaging app called Threads, stating that it is an Instagram ‘text-based conversation app.’
Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Meta, announced the formal introduction of Threads on Wednesday, July, 5, 2023, which marked the official release date of the social networking giant’s new text-focused messaging app in over 100 countries, with the exception of countries in Europe because of data privacy concerns. Threads’ intention is presented as Meta’s attempt to capture the wave of users who have left Twitter amidst the often unpredictable ownership of Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk.
The Threads app, according to Meta, is available for free download on the Apple App Store and Google Play online store in over 100 countries, and from screenshots of the app that were available on online app stores, the Threads app shares Twitter’s visual aesthetic as a text-based social messaging app in which users can post short messages that others can like, share, and comment on. Users will also be able to follow the same Threads accounts that they follow on Instagram and reply to other public posts in a way that is similar to how people use Twitter.
The Meta CEO said that the Threads app had about two million sign-ups in the first two hours of launching, over five million sign-ups within the first four hours, 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours, 30 million sign-ups in the first day, 70 million sign-ups in less than two days and 100 million sign-ups in 4 days. Valuechainfindings revealed that the President of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and Former Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, also joined the 30 million users of Threads in the first day of its launch.
The new app’s patronage has outdone and broken the record of performances of other apps before it. For instance, reports showed that it took Google+ 16 days, ChatGPT 40 days, Clubhouse 347 days, Instagram 355 days, Twitter 780 days, and Facebook 852 days to hit 10 million users. It took Twitter five years to get to 100 million users as well.
The release of Threads came as Twitter suffered a wave of mishaps under the ownership of its CEO, Elon Musk, and this left the popular social messaging app vulnerable to competing apps. In recent times, there have been series of complaints against Twitter, which came under a lot of criticism since Musk acquired it. The app recently announced a view limit for tweets. Musk had also recently said that Twitter users will only be able to see a certain number of Tweets per day in an attempt to deal with “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation” on the messaging service and numerous Twitter users publicly complained about the CEO imposing a temporary so-called “rate limit” on Twitter, saying that the Tweet limits make the app a less engaging experience.
Over time, Meta has been criticized for its market dominance, and for allegedly trying to choke off its competition by copying and killing rival applications. Currently, some competition experts and even some Threads users expressed worries that if the new app’s traction continues, it may simply lead to the accumulation of even more power and dominance for Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Musk, in response to tweets citing the news on Threads, said that “competition is fine, cheating is not.” Twitter had written to Meta threatening to take legal action over its new app, Threads, which it accused of being a copy of its own app settings. In a letter signed by Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, and addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter said that the Company has serious concerns that Meta Platforms have engaged in the systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.
According to the letter, Twitter intended to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and make demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information to promote its app, also accusing Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information”.
Other things Meta was accused of include intellectual property theft, breach of non-compete clause by Twitter former employees employed by Meta and the employment of Twitter’s ex-employees by Meta. In the letter, Spiro, also described Threads as a “copycat” and said that Meta had hired dozens of former Twitter employees.
However, Meta’s Spokesperson, Andy Stone, while responding to the letter in a post on Threads, stated that “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee, that’s just not a thing. The goal is to keep Threads friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success. That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently. We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place.”
Although Threads closely resemble Twitter visually, some of the wordings have been changed, with retweets called “reposts” and tweets called “threads”. Posts on Threads can be up to 500 characters long, as opposed to the 280 characters available for most Twitter users, and Meta has said that it plans to make the app compatible with other platforms like Mastodon, which means that users could take their accounts and followers to similar apps.
Threads comes with features similar to those of Twitter, such as liking, reposting, and deciding who can reply to conversations.
Users can also follow and connect with others who share similar interests, and build a loyal following of their own to share their ideas, opinions, and creativity with the world. However, the new app, unlike Twitter, does not have an edit button or a direct message feature. It is nonetheless superior in terms of word length and video length of 5 minutes.
Threads is freely available in 100 countries, including the UK, US and Australia. Instagram has 2 billion users and account holders can transfer their follower list on to their new Threads account. However, the Zuckerberg lieutenant overseeing the launch, who is also Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, said in an interview that the new app was aiming for cultural relevance oversize.
A United States Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who threatened to quit Twitter in May after Musk promoted a “sick” impersonator account, used her new Threads account to write, “may this platform have good vibes, strong community, excellent humor, and less harassment.”