


Watch out, Elon Musk.
Facebook parent company Meta is unveiling a new app that could become a rival to Twitter, the microblogging platform now owned by Musk.
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A listing for the app, Threads, is now live on the Apple app store, the Associated Press reported, and the full app could be available as soon as Thursday.
Billed as a text-based conversation app linked to Instagram, it teases an experience similar to that offered by Twitter.
Meta is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the company as Facebook in 2004 while still a college student and became a young multibillionaire as a result. Now 39, Zuckerberg has seen Facebook's dominance wane and his virtual reality projects struggle.
But he may see an opening for a rival to Twitter, which has been the subject of controversy since Musk's $44 billion takeover last year.
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” reads the Threads description in the app store.
Users of Instagram, another Meta product, can keep their usernames on the new app and follow the same accounts after signing up.
Musk hasn't taken the news lying down, replying "Yeah" to a post from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pointing out potential data collection from Threads.
Yeah
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2023
Musk and Zuckerberg have faced off more directly in recent weeks, with the two billionaires even jokingly agreeing to a cage match earlier this year.
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But they've also faced other controversies that have nothing to do with their rivalry.
Twitter announced Monday it will require users to pay for verification before using the TweetDeck dashboard, which attracted a measure of blowback. Meanwhile, Meta lost an antitrust case in Europe that threatens its business model on the continent.