Meta (formerly Facebook) and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are reportedly ready to fill – in a matter of hours – a gap created by rival Twitter woes as Elon Musk continues to cause dissatisfaction among users with new rules, more bizarrely the recent rate limit – as shown in the screenshot of Musk’s Tweet below – on the number of posts users can read on the social media site.
Meta’s newest microblogging platform will be called Threads, and will be available for pre-order on the Apple App Store, with a link to Instagram.
Since Musk took over Twitter last year, the microblogging site has faced incessant technical glitches, controversy over his leadership and the unceremonious firing of Twitter staff members among others. His decision to make Twitter Blue a paid service was notably among the first biggest changes he introduced following his $44 million takeover in October 2022.
How will Threads work?
According to a report by Bloomberg, Threads is a “text-based conversation app” that much like Twitter, will allow users to write and share real-time text updates among groups of followers, allowing them to like posts by fellow users, and reply, share and send direct messages.
It even borrows the name from Twitter itself; ‘Threads’ is a term for a series of connected tweets from one account, allowing users to tell their brand story in more than 280 character limit.
The news comes as Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox described Threads as “our response to Twitter” during a company meeting regarding the app. “We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe they can trust and rely upon for distribution,” he was widely quoted by media as saying, in reference to Musk’s highly criticised management style.
It’s believed that Threads will be connected to Meta’s photo and video sharing network Instagram, and will make it easy for people to find and track the same accounts that they follow there – and keep the same username.
The App Store page says the new platform will be made available as early as Friday, July 6, though it’s yet to be seen if this would be the case even for South Africa.
 a rival microblogging platform similar to the Elon Musk 'insanely run' Twitter.){kind=link}