Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s social-media smackdown
TikTok, Mr Zuckerberg’s approval rating has quietly risen to its highest level in over three years. Meta now sees an opportunity for another, commercial victory. Various startups have tried to capitalise on Twitter’s travails, with little success.
Mastodon, a decentralised social network with a single employee, said that by November it had added more than 2m members since the Twitter deal closed. But people found it fiddly and by last month it had 61% fewer users than at its November peak, estimates Sensor Tower, another data company. Truth Social, Donald Trump’s conservative social network, has failed to gain traction, especially since Mr Musk steered Twitter rightwards.
The latest pretender, Bluesky, faces the same struggle to achieve critical mass. Meta’s effort, Threads, has a better chance. For one thing, cloning rivals is what Meta does best.
In 2016, as Snapchat’s disappearing posts known as “stories" became popular, Mr Zuckerberg unveiled Instagram Stories, an eerily similar product which helped to keep Instagram on top. Last year, as TikTok’s short videos became a threat, Meta rolled out Reels, a near-identical video format that lives within Instagram and Facebook. It too has been a hit: in April Mr Zuckerberg said Reels had helped to increase the time spent on Instagram by nearly a quarter.
Threads also has a head start in achieving scale. Unlike Reels, it will be an app in its own right. But it will let those with an Instagram account use their existing login details and follow all the same people with a single click.
Read more on livemint.com
