Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, according to Semafor’s report on Thursday. The letter mentioned potential legal action by Twitter against Meta Platforms for its new Threads platform. Spiro stressed Twitter’s intent to protect its intellectual property rights and demanded that Meta immediately stop using any Twitter trade secrets or confidential information.
Threads, a new app launched by Meta on Wednesday, aims to compete with Elon Musk’s Twitter by leveraging Instagram’s extensive user base. Reuters’ requests for comment from Meta and Spiro went unanswered.
Industry analysts believe that Threads’ integration with Instagram could give it an existing user base and advertising infrastructure, potentially diverting ad revenue away from Twitter, which is currently undergoing efforts to revive its struggling business under new leadership.
Although Threads is a standalone app, users can log in using their Instagram credentials and follow the same accounts, making it a seamless addition for Instagram’s massive user base of over 2 billion monthly active users.
The launch of Threads has generated excitement among investors who see it as a potential “Twitter-Killer,” according to Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at investment firm AJ Bell.
For others, the introduction of Threads presents an opportunity to create a less toxic alternative to Twitter. Representative Ocasio-Cortez expressed her hope that the platform would foster positive vibes, a strong community, excellent humor, and reduced harassment in her post.
Similar to Twitter, Threads allows users to share short text posts that can be liked, reposted, and replied to. However, it does not include direct messaging functionality. According to a blog post from Meta, posts on Threads can be up to 500 characters long and can include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes in length.
The app is available in more than 100 countries and can be downloaded from both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, as mentioned in the Meta blog post.
