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Mark Zuckerberg takes swipe at Elon Musk after rival Twitter app sees millions of sign ups
Published 08:40 6 Jul 2023 BST
Updated 09:04 6 Jul 2023 BST
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Mark Zuckerberg took a cheeky swipe at his social media adversary Elon Musk after his rival Twitter app logged ten million users in its first hours.
The Facebook founder has recently launched a new app, Threads, which rivals Musk's Twitter with many similar features.
Threads allows users to share posts with up to 500 characters, engage with other users by liking, replying and sharing posts, and talk privately through DM.
Through its place in the larger Meta system, users can also keep the same username and follow the same accounts as they do on Zuckerberg's other app, Instagram.
It comes as many traditional Twitter features were put behind a 'blue tick' paywall by Musk, provoking outrage among users and driving many into the arms of rival apps such as Mastodon.
Writing in The New European, James Ball said the move to prioritise blue tick content could be the death of Twitter, and there's a very good reason why.
In his words, "if someone is posting regularly enough to be willing to pay $8 a month for a blue tick, but has not built up a sizeable following organically, this is a very strong signal that the posts they are producing are no good.
"It is exactly that content that Twitter’s new model relies on promoting – and those newly-minted blue ticks are quickly learning that there is no magic behind the checkmarks."
That means lots of blue ticks stop paying, and the whole revenue model fuelling Musk's new venture goes kaputt.
Amid the release of Meta's new Threads app, Zuckerberg threw some shade towards Musk after he was asked whether it would be 'bigger than Twitter'.
He said: "It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.
"Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will."
Ouch!
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