Elon Musk’s Twitter has come under fire from Mark Zuckerberg as Threads, his platform rival, has 30 million sign-ups less than 24 hours after opening.
The CEO and founder of Meta, using his new Threads account, claimed that Twitter had underachieved because of the level of animosity on the microblogging network by saying that it had not “nailed” its chance to become a mega app.
Musk has already challenged his fellow billionaire to a cage battle in response to Zuckerberg’s competitive effort against Twitter, and the Meta CEO looks to have accepted the challenge.
In an exchange with a mixed martial arts fighter on Threads, Zuckerberg noted appropriately that Twitter had missed its chance to establish itself as a major platform.
Replying on his new Threads account to MMA fighter Mike Davis, who had asked if Threads could become bigger than Twitter, Zuckerberg wrote:
“It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1bn+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this, but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”
In another Threads discussion, Zuckerberg claimed that Twitter had not lived up to its potential since the user experience had not been positive.
He wrote,
“The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success.
“That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”
In a further thread, he added: “We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place.”
However, over the years, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps have come under fire for their moderation standards, especially from whistleblower Frances Haugen, who charged the business in 2021 of prioritising profit over the interests of the general public.
An investigation into the death of Molly Russell, 14, from Britain, last year revealed that the adolescent had access to hazardous Instagram content before she committed suicide in 2017.
Since Musk purchased Twitter in October of last year, it has come under criticism for restoring previously banned accounts including those for Donald Trump and the sexist influencer Andrew Tate.
With a number of modifications, including one last weekend to restrict the number of tweets that account holders can view and to prohibit access to the site for those who are not logged in, it has also run the risk of alienating users.
Despite appearing to dismiss the “friendly” approach, Musk, who has more than 146 million followers on Twitter, did not directly mention Threads in a tweet on Thursday. Instead, he wrote: “It is definitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.” To utilise Threads, a user must have an Instagram account.
As it disclosed the first user figures, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, said early adopters of the Twitter competitor included Jennifer Lopez, Coldplay, and American football player Tom Brady.
The 30 million figure, after it went live on Wednesday at 7 p.m. EDT in the US and at midnight in the UK, compared to approximately 13 million for Mastodon, another Twitter rival, although it is still well below Twitter’s user base of more than 250 million.
Though some of the verbiage has been modified, Threads’ interface is remarkably similar to Twitter’s, with retweets referred to as “reposts” and tweets as “threads.”
The maximum character length for posts on Threads is 500, compared to the average Twitter user’s 280.
Meta has also stated that it intends to make the app interoperable with other platforms like Mastodon, allowing users to transfer their followers and accounts to related apps.
US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used her new Threads account to post the following after threatening to stop using Twitter in May because Musk boosted a “sick” imposter account:
“May this platform have good vibes, strong community, excellent humor, and less harassment.”
In addition to the US, Australia, and the UK, Threads is freely accessible in 100 more nations. There are 2 billion people on Instagram, and individuals can move their followers over to a new Threads account.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, who was in charge of the launch, stated in an interview that the new app prioritised cultural significance over scale.
Mosseri told tech news site the Verge,
“It would be great if it gets really, really big, but I’m actually more interested in if it becomes culturally relevant than if it gets hundreds of millions of users.”
