Meta's Threads to launch on July 6, should Elon Musk's Twitter be worried?

Mark Zuckerberg-backed Meta platform Threads is set to launch on July 6. The microblogging app will be a direct rival to Elon Musk's Twitter. It will allow users to follow the accounts they follow on Instagram and keep the same username, as per listing on Apple's App Store.

Meta has also launched a countdown website for the release.

Will Threads be similar to Twitter?

A preview of the app on Apple's App Store says that Threads is a platform where communities can have conversations.

"Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite 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," as per the app’s description on Apple's App Store.

  A screenshot from Apple's App Store

According to the screenshots of the application available on App Store, Threads has a similar user interface to Twitter and has identical features such as reposting, likes and allowing users to limit who can reply to posts.

Threads may collect data on health, fitness, finances, contacts, user content browsing history, purchases, diagnostics and more.

Restrictions on Twitter lead to mass exodus 

The launch of Threads was announced after temporary limitations were announced by Musk on the number of posts users can read on Twitter. He said that users would need to be verified to access TweetDeck, which would address data scraping concerns. 

"To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits - Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day, unverified accounts to 600 posts/day and new unverified accounts to 300/day," said Musk on Twitter

To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:

- Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
- Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
- New unverified accounts to 300/day

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

After the announcement, Twitter rival Mustodon's active user base had increased according to its founder Eugen Rochko.

"Looks like Mastodon's active user base has increased by 110K (110,000) over the last day. Not bad," said Rochko on the platform.

Mastodon, which has similar features to Twitter, is run by volunteer administrators who join their systems together in a federation. The platform is installed on thousands of computer servers.

BlueSky, launched by the former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey in February, had to pause new sign-ups owing to the rise in demand for the platform after the Twitter rate limit change was implemented. The platform is currently only available to users by invitation.

Dorsey tweeted a screenshot of Threads’ app privacy information saying, “All your Threads are belong to us”.

All your Threads are belong to us https://t.co/FfrIcUng5O pic.twitter.com/V7xbMOfINt

— jack (@jack) July 4, 2023

On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it would make its list-based Tweetdeck product accessible to users paying for Twitter Blue. It is majorly used by businesses and news organisations. Twitter also began requiring users to log in to view the site last week.