Meta’s About To Go Head-To-Head With Twitter

What’s going on here?

Meta’s taking the fight to Twitter, with a new, uncannily similar app called Threads.

What does this mean?

Love him or hate him, most people wouldn’t want a job on Elon Musk’s PR team. After all, it’s been one controversy after another since the tycoon took over Twitter. His relaxed approach to content moderation and the new subscription fee for verified accounts first raised eyebrows. And limiting the number of posts users can view – supposedly to ease server strain – has only pushed those furrowed caterpillars further up folks’ foreheads this past weekend. Now Meta, ever the opportunist, has smelled blood in the water: the tech giant is set to launch Threads this week, a platform linked to Instagram where users can publish, share, and reply to text-based posts. Somehow, it all sounds a little familiar…

                  Source: Google Finance

Why should I care?

The bigger picture: Something borrowed.

Twitter’s dominance in the social media space has been challenged before, with attempts like Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky and Donald Trump’s Truth Social failing to take off. But Meta has a history of making copycat products succeed. After all, it essentially copied the “stories” feature from Snap back in 2016 – and now more people use that format on Meta’s apps than use Snapchat. And that’s not to mention its “reels”, eerily similar to TikTok videos, which have been driving growth lately too. If Threads is an equally successful knockoff, it might just be a game-changer.

Zooming out: The star factor.

Let's be real: there's only one thing keeping folk on Twitter, and that’s the people they follow. Yes, Meta’s got a few strengths, like its uber-powerful infrastructure and its existing suite of apps, but to truly mount a challenge, it needs star power – and Instagram’s horde of celebrities and influencers could be the key. With that in mind, Musk might need to use all his clout to prevent his $44 billion purchase from turning to dust.

Jeff Brown, PhD

Founder & Chief Investment Analyst