Meta, the owner of Facebook, is releasing a new app to rival Twitter, which will go live on Thursday.
The app, called Threads, will be linked to Instagram and is currently available for pre-order on the Apple App Store.
Screenshots depict a dashboard that resembles Twitter almost exactly.
Threads is a “text-based conversation app,” according to Meta.
The move is the latest in a rivalry between Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk.
The two men agreed to a physical fight last month, but it’s unclear how serious they were about actually holding one.
Responding to a tweet about Threads, Mr. Musk reportedly took another swipe at Mr. Zuckerberg by saying, “thank goodness they’re so sanely run”.
Meanwhile, popular user dashboard TweetDeck, will become pay-to-use in 30 days, according to Twitter.
This move is Mr. Musk’s most recent effort to persuade users to subscribe to Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.
The multi-billionaire limited the number of tweets users could view, citing extreme “data scraping”, on Saturday.
According to Meta’s Threads app, the service will be free and there will not be any limits on how many posts a user can view.
The App Store’s description of Threads reads: “Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow”.
Recent years have seen the emergence of several applications that are eerily similar to Twitter, including Donald Trump’s Truth Social and Mastodon.
The biggest danger Twitter may currently face however comes from Threads.
Meta is a stronger competitor to Twitter. Threads will be a component of the Instagram platform, making it accessible to hundreds of millions of accounts.
It is not starting from scratch like other potential competitors have had to do.
Source-BBC
