Smartphone users have new "Threads" social media option
Last month Twitter owner Elon Musk used one of his tweets to challenge Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "I'm up for a cage match if he is lol." Zuckerberg responded with four words: "Send me the location." That fight hasn't come to fruition but the virtual one appears to be escalating.
INSTAGRAM THREADS
Meta owns Instagram and that company released a new app called "Threads" on Wednesday that looks a whole lot like Twitter.
"It will be strategically, intentionally, unashamedly similar to Twitter," says social media consultant Matt Navarra.
Some are calling "Threads" a "Twitter killer."
"Threads" is billed as a text-based conversation app. Instagram users can link their accounts to the new app and follow the same people.
The app received 10 million sign-ups within seven hours of its launch, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on his verified Threads account.
"Instagram has 2 billion users compared to around 250 million on Twitter. So, if only one in ten Instagram users tries using threads, it's overtaken Twitter in the blink of an eye," said social media commentator Drew Benvie.
A NEW PROBLEM
This is just the latest challenge for Twitter CEO Elon Musk. There's already competition from BlueSky Social, a new app launched by Twitter's inventor and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Musk is also facing backlash for his recent decision to limit the number of tweets users can see.
"Since Elon Musk took over, the system itself isn't working as well as it should. Just over the weekend we saw Twitter go down and there are limits put in place for users so that it doesn't break the servers again," Benvie said.
Musk says some of his moves are an attempt to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data. He also commented recently on a screenshot from of the Instagram Threads privacy section in the App Store showing what personal information might be collected. We'll see if those issues keep Instagram users from downloading the new app.
