Goodbye Twitter, hello Threads. Meta has launched its new text-based social media app and it picked up 10 million users in seven hours – thanks largely to a link-up with people’s Instagram profiles and followers. The release capitalises on Twitter’s struggles with cratering advertising revenues and its implementation of strict rate limits for non-paying users. With a Mark Zuckerberg/Elon Musk Vegas cage fight pending, it’s arguably a square hit in the jaw from the Meta corner and Zuck knows it – he tweeted yesterday for the first time since 2012, posting a meme of two Spidermen pointing at each other. Threads is missing some of Twitter’s key features: there aren’t direct messages or separate feeds for “following” and “for you” (currently the main feed is a mishmash of Instagram’s celebs, brand accounts and influencers) and it isn’t being offered in the EU until Meta reaches an accommodation with the bloc’s data rules. Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, “threaded” to say he hopes the new platform can be an “open and friendly” place for conversations. It’s too early to say if it will be, or what that might mean.
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