On Wednesday night, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta dealt Elon Musk a blow as the much anticipated Threads platform, an Instagram clone of Twitter, finally launched, setting the stage for the tech billionaires’ fight. “Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg posted on the app.
Although Threads was first released as a standalone app, users could log in with their Instagram credentials and follow the same profiles, potentially making it simple for Instagram’s more than 2 billion monthly active users to incorporate it into their routines.
The app, which is marketed as a text-based Instagram alternative for “real-time updates and public conversations,” will at first be accessible in more than 100 nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan.
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Due to ongoing discussions between Meta and regulators about how to control data sharing between the app and Instagram, Threads won’t be initially available in the European Union. Among the first famous people to sign up for the website were actor Jack Black, pop diva Shakira, and British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.
Launching the network that some tech analysts have termed a “Twitter killer” is seen as a direct challenge to Musk, whose management of Twitter has drawn harsh criticism from some users and is sure to exacerbate the competition between the two billionaire tech titans.
The newly launched Threads app, which users can access using their current Instagram accounts, might profit from Instagram’s user base and connections to advertising.
