Facebook parent company Meta broke most-downloaded records recently with its new app, Threads. It’s a direct challenge to Twitter, which has been upended under the leadership of Elon Musk.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Facebook parent company Meta is making a splash with its new app, Threads. It’s a rival to Twitter. And in the first couple of days, more than 70 million people have downloaded it already. In response, Twitter owner Elon Musk is on the defensive and is threatening legal action. NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn joins us to catch up on this. Hey, Bobby.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: So there have been so many Twitter rivals that have just been instant duds. What is it about Threads that has made it such a hit so quickly?
ALLYN: A few things. First is Meta. We know they own Instagram, one of the most popular social media apps, and Threads works by basically building on top of Instagram. So you download the Threads app, and with one click, you can port over everyone who follows you on Instagram into Threads. And some of these other Twitter rivals, like Mastodon and Bluesky and Post and so on, one of the key challenges was it was hard to, like, build the following that many people had on Twitter. But with Instagram, just one click, you can do that, so it’s taking off.
Another reason why it’s taking off, of course, is Twitter under Elon Musk. It’s chaotic. It’s unpredictable. Policy decisions come and go at the erratic whims of Elon Musk. And Meta has just poured real engineering resources into this. It’s sleek. It’s simple. It’s clean. Yeah. I mean, if anyone was going to try to sink Twitter in a successful way, it was going to be meta. And it’s been a runaway success so far.
DETROW: And this happens a week or so after Twitter saw even more, you know – the most unprecedented yet levels of dysfunction with limits on who could even view tweets. Elon Musk is threatening to sue Zuckerberg over Threads now, saying…
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