Meta will launch Threads on Wednesday, a new “microblogging” social network comparable to Twitter, while the platform controlled by Elon Musk is weakened, to the point of asking the question of its survival, even if its rival will remain, for the moment, at the gates of the European Union.
Initially announced Thursday on app stores, the debut of Meta’s new creation has been brought forward to Wednesday at 11:00 p.m. GMT (7:00 p.m. in Quebec), according to the site to which Instagram refers.
“Instagram’s text chat app. That’s the description of Threads on the Apple Store, with a presentation that looks close to Twitter’s, according to the visuals.
The launch of Threads comes just four months after the first echoes of the project filtered.
Meta has not communicated formally on the beginnings of this new platform, which comes just days after a new episode at Twitter, whose social network is weakened.
On Saturday, the main shareholder Elon Musk announced the establishment, officially on a provisional basis, of a limit to the number of messages that can be consulted per account and per day, which took users, advertisers and developers the wrong way.
A decision which comes after several other badly received since the takeover of the billionaire, in particular the transformation into a paid service of the verification of an account or the dismissal of almost all of the content moderation teams.
On Monday, Twitter also announced that the TweetDeck dashboard, which is very popular among active users, would soon only be accessible to verified, and therefore paying, accounts.
“The timing is very good for Meta,” commented Jonathan Taplin, author of two books on tech giants, including The End of Reality, to be published in September. “There are lots of people who have an almost religious resistance to anything related to Elon Musk. »
For him, Threads does represent an existential threat to Twitter.
Launching ramp
However, the immediate impact of this launch could be limited by the fact that Meta has chosen to wait before offering Threads to residents of the European Union.
The giant wants to take the time to clarify the consequences for the company and its products of the new digital market regulations (DMA), which came into force in early May, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The DMA aims to impose specific rules on essential Internet companies, in particular Meta, to avoid anti-competitive practices.
The Menlo Park (California) group nevertheless intends to eventually launch Threads in the European Union, on a date yet to be defined, the source said.
Asked by AFP, Meta did not respond immediately.
Meta makes no secret of the synergies on which he intends to rely to rapidly grow his newborn, presenting him from the outset as an offshoot of Instagram.
The latter “is the most successful product of the Meta family,” recalls Pinar Yildirim, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “They couldn’t associate this new product with Facebook, because that name no longer appeals to anyone. »
With more than two billion active users, Instagram gives Threads a launch pad that Twitter’s smaller competitors, from Mastodon to Bluesky, to ultra-conservative favorites like Truth Social, couldn’t have dreamed of. Speak, Gettr or Gab.
“The equation is simple: if an Instagram user with a large number of followers, like [Kim] Kardashian or [Justin] Bieber or [Lionel] Messi is starting to post on Threads regularly, this new platform could grow quickly and I think advertising budgets would follow in a tight timeframe,” analyst Brian Wieser wrote on Substack.
This prospect is potentially all the more worrying for Twitter as the San Francisco group has seen its advertising revenue melt since the arrival of Elon Musk at its head.
An exodus that has not yet managed to stem the new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, arrived a month ago at Twitter but very silent so far.