With more than thirty million accounts in less than 24 hours, the social network Threads has already shaken up its rival Twitter, provoking the sarcasm of the owner of the blue bird Elon Musk who threatened to sue Meta.
“Wow, 30 million accounts created,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Threads parent company Meta, wrote Thursday. “Looks like the start of something great, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us to build” what is billed as Instagram’s “text chat app.”
Earlier, he had launched a spade at his rival Elon Musk: “It will take time but I think there should be a conversation app with at least a billion people on it. Twitter had the opportunity to do so but failed. We hope to get there”.
To a tweet from a user who thought the Threads logo “looks like [ait] to a tapeworm,” Twitter’s majority shareholder commented, “Metaphorically, too,” likening the new platform to a parasite.
He also reacted with a crying laughing emoji to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s tweet saying, “We wanted flying cars. Instead, we got seven Twitter clones. »
But the hot-headed billionaire didn’t just laugh, sending a letter through the attorney for Twitter’s parent company, X Corp, accusing Meta of breaching trade secrets and copyright infringement. intellectual property.
Facebook’s parent company is accused of recruiting “dozens” of former Twitter employees, according to the document published by the Semafor news site.
Giving Meta formal notice to cease its actions, X Corp said it was ready to take legal action if it did not.
“Competition is not a problem. Cheating is one, ”denounced Elon Musk on Twitter.
“No member of the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone replied on the new social network.
Not in Europe
The posting of Threads comes a few days after new adventures at Twitter, already weakened by a series of unwelcome decisions since its takeover by Elon Musk: transformation into a paid service for verifying an account or dismissal of the quasi -all of the content moderation teams.
The billionaire announced on Saturday the establishment, officially on a provisional basis, of a limit to the number of messages that can be consulted per account and per day. On Monday, Twitter revealed that the TweetDeck dashboard would soon only be accessible to verified, therefore paying, accounts.
“The timing is very good for Meta,” commented Jonathan Taplin, author of two books on tech giants. “Twitter is seriously hurt and Threads could deal it another major blow,” said Jasmine Enberg, analyst at Insider Intelligence. “Twitter users are desperate for an alternative and Musk has presented Zuckerberg with an opportunity. »
The only big downside: Meta chose to wait before offering Threads in the European Union while it clarified the consequences of the new digital market regulations, which came into force in early May, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri lamented the postponement of Threads’ rollout in Europe, saying that if Meta had had to wait for approval from Brussels, the launch would also have been pushed back for many months.
“I was worried to see our window close because the timing is important,” he explained to the specialized site Platformer.
Synergies
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.
Threads thus allows Instagram users to be authenticated with their existing identifiers to post content on the new platform.
Many celebrities and brands have already created an account, from singer Shakira to Coca-Cola, including Jennifer Lopez and Oprah Winfrey.
Threads does not currently host advertising, but this prospect is potentially worrying for Twitter, which has seen its advertising revenue melt away since Elon Musk took over as 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.