Meta launches Threads app in direct challenge to Elon Musk's Twitter
Meta's new social media app appears to mimic Twitter and will be called Threads
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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, revealed Monday a new "conversation" app called Threads, which appears to mimic Twitter – a direct challenge to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
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A listing for the app, called Threads, appeared on Apple’s App Store, indicating it would debut as early as Thursday, July 6. However, Wednesday afternoon, there were reports it could be available sooner.
The app can be downloaded from the Apple store.
It is billed as "Instagram's text-based conversation app," with the listing teasing a Twitter-like microblogging experience.
Threads, appeared on Apple’s App Store, indicating it would debut as early as Thursday, July 6. (Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow," it said.
"Whatever it is you're interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things -- or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world," the app-store description added.
Meta
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Users, who must be at least 12 years old, will be able to keep their Instagram account and keep their usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app, according to screenshots displayed on the App Store listing.
Instagram users will be able to keep their user names and follow the same accounts on the new app, according to screenshots displayed on the App Store listing. (Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Getty Images)
A privacy policy provided in the app-store indicated that Meta's Threads may collect data from users including: health and fitness, financial information, contact information, search history and location, among others.
Twitter collects information from users during their use of the platform, when users provide the information directly and when Twitter receives data from third parties, the company's privacy policy says.
Twitter app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken, July 13, 2021. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration//File Photo / Reuters Photos)
Twitter has rolled out a series of unpopular changes in recent days, including rate limits on the number of tweets users can view.
Musk imposed the rate limits because of "extreme levels" of data scraping and system manipulation, saying that Twitter was "getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading the user experience!" The rate limits gradually rose from 6,000 posts per day for verified accounts and 600 posts per day for unverified accounts, to 10,000 for verified users and 1,000 for unverified users.
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When users hit their limits, they received error messages saying, "Rate limit exceeded" or "Unable to load tweets" as tweets failed to load and populate users’ feeds with fresh content.
Musk attributed the cause of excessive dating scraping on Twitter to artificial intelligence (AI) companies pulling in data for the purpose of training their models.
"Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data. It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation," Musk said in a tweet.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla, during the EEI 2023 event in Austin, Texas, US, on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. The event aims to address the major challenges and opportunities facing electric companies today. (Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Twitter also released a requirement for users to be verified to use the online dashboard TweetDeck.
The policy announced Monday takes effect in 30 days and appears to be aimed at raising extra revenue because users need to pay have their accounts verified under Musk’s changes. TweetDeck is popular with companies and news organizations, allowing users to manage multiple Twitter accounts.
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Twitter and Meta did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Fox News' Eric Revell contributed to this report.