Meta launches Twitter competitor Threads as Zuckerberg and Musk rivalry intensifies

Amna Nawaz:

Mark Zuckerberg's company Meta has launched its new app that's expected to compete with Twitter, which has faced backlash under the ownership of Elon Musk.

The text-based app, known as Threads, looks nearly identical to Twitter and has seen more than 30 million users sign up since yesterday's launch.

Mike Isaac is a technology reporter for The New York Times, and he has been covering it all.

Mike, welcome, and thanks for joining us.

Thirty million sign-ups as of noon today. Was that to be expected or does that number surprise you?

Mike Isaac, The New York Times:

It certainly surprised me. It's even really surprised Mark Zuckerberg, who woke up this morning and around 8:00 a.m. posted 30 million.

And last night he was posting every couple of hours basically as the numbers of users ticked up. So, I think, even inside of Instagram, Facebook, and Meta, they're really surprised at how quickly people are embracing the app.

Amna Nawaz:

So I think you have been testing out the new app, as have I, many other people too. What do you think? How is Threads going to compete with Twitter?

Mike Isaac:

Yes, I mean, the sort of simplicity of it, in that it is basically the exact same thing as Twitter, I think, really helps the product, just because folks have been really upset by a lot of the changes that Elon Musk has made to Twitter since he bought it last year.

And they basically wanted another Twitter, but not owned by Elon Musk. And this also lets you import the graph of people that you follow on Instagram over to the new app, which basically makes it up — make it easy to get up and going right away instead, of having to follow a bunch of people right off the bat.

Amna Nawaz:

And the functionality is basically the same, right? It's text-based. You still have a scrolling feed. You can post videos and pictures too.

But what about the timing, Mike? Why now? Why is Mark Zuckerberg going into Twitter's territory right now?

Mike Isaac:

Sure.

Frankly, I think it's because Mark senses weakness. And there is weakness. Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, he's made a number of strategic and business missteps. Last weekend, over the long holiday weekend, he took Twitter offline for a lot of people and basically the app stopped working.

And we were talking to the head of Instagram yesterday. And our reporting basically said that they started developing the app inside of Meta last winter, when they saw that Twitter was really in tumult. And Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg are intensely competitive, and they want to gain as much territory as they can.

And they saw that Twitter gave them an opportunity to do so.

Amna Nawaz:

So, in terms of a response from Elon Musk, there's some reporting that Twitter's threatening to now sue Meta over Threads, sending Zuckerberg a cease-and-desist letter.

We know Musk has been tweeting about this. This afternoon, he tweeted this, saying: "Competition is fine. Cheating is not."

Mike, what is all this tell you about how Elon Musk views this competitor?

(LAUGHTER)

Mike Isaac:

He is not happy, for sure. He has been basically pushing back, trying to get folks who are — quote unquote — "scraping" Twitter's data or using it to build other apps and services.

And I would take the threat of legal action pretty real from him. He likes going to court and using his advantage in having billions of dollars to tangle things up in litigation is a real thing. That said, he has a pretty formidable opponent in Meta and Facebook, which has also got very deep pockets and is willing to go to battle over this, as they said before, that the suit, they believe, is baseless.

Amna Nawaz:

You cannot separate these apps from the men in charge. You have two tech giants here and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

They have engaged, as you mentioned, in their own personal feud online, even threatening to physically fight one another. How does all of this competition factor into these business decisions right now?

Mike Isaac:

No, you're exactly right.

I think just as much egos involved as there is business strategy, but I do think that we're in a really interesting and difficult time in social media. And there was an assumption for a long time that Facebook kind of owned at all, but it feels more up for grabs in a lot of ways. That probably wasn't true a few years ago.

So, you see Twitter sort of on the ropes, Meta creating new apps, different start-ups, like Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill. There's a bunch of different companies that feel like there's an opportunity here. And at the helm of almost all of these, you have either the billionaires of the world controlling them or would-be entrants from little start-ups that feel like they can break in from, like, BeReal, which is another one.

So everything feels very up for grabs and up in the air in a way that that's pretty exciting and hasn't been like this in a while.

Amna Nawaz:

We will see what happens next.

That is Mike Isaac, technology reporter from The New York Times, joining us tonight.

Mike, thank you. Good to see you.

Mike Isaac:

Thanks for having me.