Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announces work on a new social network

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced on Friday March 10 that it was working on a new social network. The description seems to make it a potential future competitor to Twitter. “We are thinking about a decentralized and independent social network allowing to share written messages in real time”, the group said in a statement sent to AFP, confirming information disclosed by the Platformer site.

According to the latter, the new application would be designed to be interoperable with other networks of the same type, such as Mastodon, which has gained relative popularity since the takeover of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk in October 2022.. Mastodon operates through decentralized servers, with no central management or decision-making authority.

A choice that stands out from Twitter

This would therefore be a major break with the strategy hitherto employed by the tech giants, which have always preferred to operate in a closed environment and with their own rules of use. This announcement comes as Twitter has been losing momentum since the takeover by Elon Musk, who laid off more than half of the employees.

The choice of interoperability envisaged by Meta also stands out from Twitter’s approach to the matter: in December, Elon Musk had briefly blocked the accounts of several users who shared links to other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram or Mastodon.