Thursday cage fight: Mark Zuckerberg throws a punch at Elon Musk with Twitter rival Threads

Threads will be a standalone app and users can like, comment, repost and share posts.

Currently, the application is available only on Apple’s App Store and users can sign up before its Thursday launch.

“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things — or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions, and creativity with the world,” read the description of the app on the App Store.

From the looks of it, Threads aims to do precisely what Twitter does and much more, considering it has a vast ecosystem — Facebook and Instagram — backing it.

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For instance, users can directly port their Instagram followers and following lists to Threads, and get a sense of continuity rather than starting from scratch as happens with Twitter.

While not many details about the app are available yet, a glance at the App Store listing shows that the settings will let users determine who can reply to their posts — everyone, people you follow, or only those mentioned in the post.

More trouble for Twitter

While Zuckerberg has been planning such an app for some time now, the timing of the launch spells more trouble for Twitter, which is already embroiled in a multitude of issues. Many of those issues cropped up after the platform was taken over by Elon Musk.

Among the changes that have angered Twitter users, and spurred them to seek alternative platforms, are the platform’s looser content moderation policies, constant tinkering with the algorithm, and the imposition of a monthly subscription fee for the Twitter Blue badge/ verified ID.

Adding to this, Musk came up with a new diktat last Saturday when he applied ‘temporary limits’ on the number of tweets a user can see. Many users complained about the ‘cannot retrieve tweets’ and ‘rate limit exceeded’ error messages on their timelines, and called out Musk and Twitter for restricting access. It is not clear how advertisers will react to limits on Tweet views.

Twitter’s plunging revenue and the increasing sense of alienation among its advertisers are major headaches for the platform.

Also read | ETtech Explainer: Will rate limits accelerate the decline in Twitter’s revenue?

Meta’s take

For Meta, the launch comes amid the frustration of existing Twitter users with Musk’s antics, and rivals Mastodon and Bluesky looking to carve out a bigger slice of the market for themselves.

According to a New York Times report, Instagram has been promoting the forthcoming app with various celebrities and influencers for months, aiming to generate a buzz.

The report added that Meta’s executives have discussed ways to capitalise on the chaos at Twitter since last year, including by building the rival service.

“Twitter is in crisis and Meta needs its mojo back,” one Meta employee wrote in an internal post last year, according to the report. “Let’s go for their bread and butter.”