Shortly after Musk’s tweet restriction: Thursday comes Meta’s competitor “Threads”.

The long-awaited Twitter competitor of the Facebook group Meta will be launched in a few days. The application called “Threads” was announced on Thursday on Apple’s US App Store.

The Twitter platform, which has been massively turned inside out by new owner Elon Musk, is now in the midst of new turbulence, trying to convert users of its Tweetdeck app into paying subscription customers. Tweetdeck, which is mainly used by professional Twitter users such as journalists, is getting a new version that will be paid for after 30 days, the service announced on Monday.

Meta is the strongest Twitter rival

While there are several smaller Twitter competitors, Mark Zuckerberg’s meta is considered a particularly strong rival. The group knows how to operate large online platforms and, unlike the longtime top dog Twitter in the Musk era, has no money problems.

A starting advantage could also be the foundation of the more than one billion users already linked: The Threads app is linked to Meta’s popular photo and video app Instagram. With other Twitter rivals like Mastodon, Bluesky and T2, such user networks that have grown over the years need to be restored.

This sets the course for a business duel between Musk and Zuckerberg, after the two billionaires had already agreed to an exhibition duel in the ring in June. The “New York Times” reported over the weekend that such a fight is actually being prepared – but it is still unclear whether it will actually take place. Zuckerberg, 39, trains with martial arts trainers and is visibly fitter than 52-year-old tech billionaire Musk.

Musk restricts viewing of tweets

Musk imposed restrictions on viewing tweets on Twitter in an unprecedented move this weekend. According to this, paying subscription customers should be able to read up to 10,000 tweets per day and users without a subscription up to 1,000 posts. Musk explained the move by saying there were too many attempts to skim large amounts of data from Twitter.

Problems followed the announcement at Tweetdeck, where, among other things, the display of lists was disrupted. Recently, tweets could only be displayed without advertising and with automatic updates via Tweetdeck. It has been speculated for years that the heavy-user software could become affordable – long before Musk’s multibillion-dollar acquisition in the fall of 2022. The technology blog “The Verge”, citing software developers, offered an explanation for the recent problems with Tweetdeck: Twitter removed interfaces the program used to access the platform. (sda/dpa)