Meta To Unveil Twitter Challenge Called 'Threads' As Musk Defends Platform Changes
Threads, "Instagram's text-based conversation app", is slated to launch on Thursday.
Meta Platforms (META) - Get Free Report shares edged lower Wednesday amid reports that the social media giant will launch a text-based rival to Twitter, expected to be called 'Threads', over the coming days.
Meta's Apple App Store listing for Threads -- which it calls "Instagram's text-based conversation app" -- suggests the platform will launch Thursday, and will allow users to keep their username and followers from their Instagram profile.
"Whatever it is you're interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things," Meta's App Store listing says. Threads is “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today, to what’ll be trending tomorrow.”
Earlier this spring, Meta said active users across its 'Family of Apps', which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, rose 2% from last year to just under 3 billion, while daily active users were up 4% from last year at 2.03 billion.
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The move follows a series of controversial changes to the Twitter website, unveiled over the weekend, that limit the number of Tweets both verified and unverified users can see each days as part of an effort lead by Elon Musk to counter what he called "extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation" on the micro-blogging website.
The limits, Musk said, would be temporary and would restrict nonverified users to viewing 600 posts per day. Verified accounts, which pay $8 a month, can view 6,000 posts per day.
The totals were later lifted to 1,000 and 10,000 respectively following a series of user complaints and outages on various Twitter-linked platforms.
New Twitter CEO Lind Yaccarino, who joined the group from NBCUniversal in June, said Tuesday that that Twitter need to make "big move to keep strengthening the platform", a view echoed in a company statement that said the steps were taken to "ensure the authenticity of our user base."
Meta shares were marked 0.31% lower in pre-market trading, indicating an opening bell price of $285.14 each.
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