Why Meta's Threads app is the biggest threat to Twitter yet

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Threads as a competitor to Twitter is a game-changer. Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, launched the new platform yesterday, ahead of schedule. Threads was welcomed almost immediately – especially by hordes of Twitter users that have watched in dismay as their beloved platform crumbles in the hands of Elon Musk.

In less than 24 hours, Threads attracted some 30 million users. And with Meta already having more than two billion Instagram users who can directly link their accounts to it, Threads’ user base will grow fast. With its simple black and white feed, and features that let you reply, love, quote and comment on other people’s “threads”, the similarities between Threads and Twitter are obvious.

The question now is: will Threads be the one that finally unseats Twitter?We’ve been here before In October of last year, Twitter users looked on helplessly as Elon Musk became CEO. Mastodon was the first “escape plan”. But many found its decentralised servers difficult and confusing to use, with each one having very different content rules and communities.

Many Twitter fans created “back up” Mastodon accounts in case Twitter crashed, and waited to see what Musk would do next. The wait wasn’t long. Platform instability and outages became common as Musk started laying off Twitter staff (he has now fired about 80% of Twitter’s original workforce).

Shortly after, Musk horrified users and made headlines by upending Twitter’s verification system and forcing “blue tick” holders to pay for the privilege of authentication. This opened the door for account impersonations and the sharing of misinformation at scale. Some large corporate brands left the platform, taking their advertising dollars with them.