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Meta is Exploring Plans to Build a Twitter Rival (bbc.com) 81

Posted by EditorDavid from the Meta-commentary dept.
"Meta, the parent firm of Facebook and Instagram, is working on a standalone, text-based social network app," reports the BBC.
BR> "It could rival both Twitter and its decentralised competitor, Mastodon." A spokesperson told the BBC: "We're exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates...." According to MoneyControl, the new app is codenamed P92, and will allow users to log in through their existing Instagram credentials.

Meta's app will be based on a similar framework to the one that powers Mastodon, a Twitter-like service which was launched in 2016. The new app would be decentralised — it cannot be run at the whim of a single entity, bought or sold....

It was not immediately clear when Meta would roll out the new app.
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Meta is Exploring Plans to Build a Twitter Rival More

Meta is Exploring Plans to Build a Twitter Rival

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  • Get the popcorn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by korgitser ( 1809018 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @03:50AM (#63365497)
    Making people choose between their hate of Musk and disgust of Zuck. That is going to be fun to watch. But I call Twitter wins out of inertia.

    • Re:Get the popcorn (Score:5, Funny)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @04:33AM (#63365547)

      I suggest we decide it in a boxing match between Musk and Zuck.

      Whoever loses.
      We win.

      • Musk at least does SpaceX and non-combustion cars, so despite his insanity elsewhere he does at least some good. Zuck seems to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

        • Why do you think I suggested a boxing match between the geek and someone who at least looks like he can throw a punch?

        • If after volunteering at a soup kitchen for the homeless, I speed home and I am stopped by the officer, I will still get a ticket, and the fact that I was doing good doesn't excuse me or allow me to do wrong.

          Musk did a good thing with investing his money, time and effort in Tesla and Space X. He became the richest person in the world, so he was actually rewarded for his efforts. If are the person who believes in Karma, Karma had been served, any additional Assholeatry done by Musk deserves punishment and

      • I would much rather a Michael Jackson's Beat It style knife-fight.

    • Re:Get the popcorn (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dargaud ( 518470 ) <[ten.duagradg] [ta] [2todhsals]> on Monday March 13, 2023 @04:48AM (#63365569) Homepage
      I'm surprised they haven't fired the wrong engineer at Twitter yet, and the whole system grinds to a halt because nobody has the right passwd to fix it or even knows how to fix it...

      • I'm surprised they haven't fired the wrong engineer at Twitter yet, and the whole system grinds to a halt because nobody has the right passwd to fix it or even knows how to fix it...

        Twitter has had more outages in January and February alone than it has had over the past decade. They definitely were firing the wrong engineers, the company very much seems to be run by Musk going in and hitting reset on any server every time something goes wrong.

        • Probably not the wrong engineers, just maybe a lot of changes recently.

        • The "Hardcore" Engineer who works long hard hours, is often inefficient with their time, or inexperienced so they are working harder then they should. Those Old Gray Hair engineers who work their shift and call it a day, Know what needs to be done, does their job well and effectively, their experience lowers the amount of reworking and retrying.

      • Re:Get the popcorn (Score:5, Funny)

        by christoban ( 3028573 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @07:18AM (#63365817)

        Huh, it's like the richest guy on the planet and excellent engineer actually knows how to run a tech company!

        • Too bad none of those 3 things apply to either person.

        • Neither are excellent engineers, Their wealth was from making the right product at the right time, after that is a set of follies and screwups that outnumber the successes, but their initial successes bring in the money, to support the other follies.

      • It's fairly resilient and it can take a lot of abuse before it finally goes down. Like anything they're going to be limits. And their CEO tinkering with the system isn't going to help. But I'll go surprisingly long time before it has a real collapse. It's more likely to be taken down by finances
        • Built to run itself? Apparently not. From what I've read, the system has been crashing every 15 minutes. Most of the advanced features are flaking out at random times or straight-up broken. And, when the automated feeds are actually functioning, they seem to pump in a non-stop stream of Musk's own tweets.

          I wouldn't exactly call that "running itself". But, yes, the system will be taken down by finances rather than any technological problem.

          As far as Facebook standing up a competitor - there are going

          • From the users' point of view, most of the site is working most of the time. Embarrassingly, front page feeds weren't working reliably for a long time, though they seem to have been ok for a while now. Trending has been working pretty reliably, which is either very lucky or very smart — if you want two things to work right, they're tweeting and trending. People can go straight to the pages of those they follow if they really want to see what they're tweeting, but if trending isn't working then a major

    • > Making people choose between their hate of Musk and disgust of Zuck.

      The latest information is that Twitter was an FBI psyop and Facebook is a CIA psyop.

      Of course they'll be at each other, using the American People as terrain in their proxy wars.

      • Well, you know, as long as two dogs are fighting over a bone, the third one can eat it. Who is the third one here, is left as an exercise for the reader.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The "Mastodon FTW" pipe dream already fell flat some time ago, in the weeks of butthurt following Musk bringing the sink in. It was never going to happen. The fix the Twitter crowd is addicted to is not going to be found on a platform where the network effect and their bubble world that they have spent years on building are not there. And that's not even talking about the fact that Mastodon is not idiot level usable. Whether the Twitterati admit it or not, they have their priorities and they have made their

    • I don't think Facebook is counting on winning or losing, Twitter was already losing money before it added over a billion dollars in interest payments to service the debt from the buyout and lost 40% of their advertisers while slashing their advertising rates in half. Twitter can get by for a while but not paying for anything but electricity but eventually that's going to catch up to them. Facebook is counting on Twitter going under

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by haruchai ( 17472 )

      Making people choose between their hate of Musk and disgust of Zuck. That is going to be fun to watch. But I call Twitter wins out of inertia.

      Elon could & should have built a Twitter clone, which could be done in a few months & relatively cheap - even using their own code - opensource.twitter.dev - but he didn't truly care about "free speech".
      His goal was to acquire & weaponize Twitter's DATA.
      Mission Accomplished, I guess. Hope he chokes on it.

    • The only winning move is not to play.

  • Dup (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @03:54AM (#63365501)
    https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

  • Yeah! Party like it's 1999 (Score:3)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @04:02AM (#63365509)

    15 years late to the scene with the idea that you can just take over the scene.
    Bro! Get real!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by greytree ( 7124971 )
      Some of us remember Palm saying that Apple wasn't just going to come in and steal their smartphone business...

      http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9110/colligan-laughs-off-iphone-competition/

      • Apple had a vastly superior product and wasn't hated by everyone as a company and everyone loved Steve Jobs.

        FB/Zuck has none of those things going on. The odds that FB builds a superior product is close to zero. Zuckerberg is universally loathed and so is his company because he is his company.

        • Not relevant. The network effect is at play. The only definition of a "superior" product in communications world is a product with more people you wish to communicate with. It's why I still use Messenger to communicate with some people despite it being the fucking worst and owned by Meta. It doesn't help me if I install Signal if I can't do the one thing I need to do: communicate with people.

          In other news, right-wing nutjobs didn't flee Twitter for Truth either because as it turned out they weren't talking

      • The smartphone business has no network effect. You can take over the business with a superior / more desirable product (just like how Apple took the world by storm with something unique initially capturing near market exclusivity but now only has about 25% of the total market).

        For any product that is impacted by the network effect you need to have a co-ordinated loss of users from the prime product before you can even consider getting a foothold in the market, much less take it over. Its why I still use a M

    • 15 years late to the scene with the idea that you can just take over the scene.
      Bro! Get real!

      It's still a better idea than The Metaverse.

    • 15 years late to the scene with the idea that you can just take over the scene.
      Bro! Get real!

      Facebook was built on the premise that you can take over the scene. The problem is they did it precisely once and every other "achievement" has been buying out someone already in the scene.

  • They and everybody else ... (Score:3)

    by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @04:13AM (#63365527)

    Meta is Exploring Plans to Build a Twitter Rival

    They and everybody else. The iconic management philosophy and peerless business genius of Elon Musk has created a golden opportunity for others to steal market share from Twitter.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by christoban ( 3028573 )

      More like the vindictive nature of far left employees going after all its advertisers has put a huge ding in its revenue stream.

      • More like the vindictive nature of far left employees going after all its advertisers has put a huge ding in its revenue stream.

        Not sure what to make of that. If that was a sarcastic troll then good work, if you actually believe that dribble then you are a pathetic sycophant.

  • The fall of Twitter won't mean... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @05:01AM (#63365581)

    ... the rise of a new equivalent. I don't think the market wants it. People want to retreat to their echo chambers, emerging into the commons only to be dicks. There's no need for a marketplace of ideas if nobody is listening.

    • Twitter became an online home for a number of communities, so if Twitter goes away they'll be looking for something else. It's not Facebook, because if they wanted to be there, they'd have been there already. So what is it?

    • The rise of new equivalents will happen anyway, because of the new generation wanting new different things (and not hang out where the uncool older people do).
      Twitter falling means just greater pressure for a new equivalent, and some redistribution of existing Twitter-base into alternatives.
      Inertia is strong, as is the frequent illusion (and occasional reality) of "having built a community"

    • ... the rise of a new equivalent. I don't think the market wants it. People want to retreat to their echo chambers, emerging into the commons only to be dicks. There's no need for a marketplace of ideas if nobody is listening.

      I don't know if the market wants another Twitter specifically, but it needs something. The true role of Twitter isn't the international conversation as much as international press releases. Posting a short sports clip or a tiny statement.

      Instagram can do a bit of this, but it's better suited to stories than clips or mini-statements.

      That's why Twitter links are so common in new stories, it's the easiest way to publicly share something with a little bit of context.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      From nostr.com: "The only supported transport is websockets connections from clients to relays." It's a write-only protocol?

      No, wait, the iOS client is called Damus. Get it, Nostr Damus? It's so people can write incoherent gibberish that only begins to make sense if you take short segments of text out of order.

      Why hasn't this protocol dethroned every other microblogging platform in the world?!

  • Zuckerberg just has to use his bully pulpit to post lots of loony left-wing conspiracy theories, then there's balance and everyone will be happy, right?
    • You think Zuckerberg's left wing?!
      • It is not relevant to my quip, but based on the nonsense his wife spouts and his funding of the manhaters at code.org, Zuckerberg is most definitely a loony wokeist.

        https://www.influencewatch.org/person/mark-zuckerberg/

  • The new app would be decentralised â" it cannot be run at the whim of a single entity, bought or sold....

    If it cannot be run at the whim of a single entity, why would Facebook create it? There has to be a catch.

    • They'll probably bake the surveillance into the app itself. Why limit the privacy rape to the things you say when you can also connect it with the place it's said in and whether the phone shakes fast enough to assume you're having sex?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by unrtst ( 777550 )

      If it cannot be run at the whim of a single entity, why would Facebook create it? There has to be a catch.

      Sap twitter of more users(money). Take some of those users (even if it's at a loss). Twitter crumbles (who cares if some people remain if most leave). Drop or change their replacement (pull the rug out from under the users) so they're suddenly locked in (ex. like Post, just block the rest of the Fediverse and wall in the users... maybe merge them with facebook users or a new product).

      Also, the user connectivity graphs are money. This gives them a way to get that info and cleanly bind it to their existing us

  • Gentlemen, start your startups!! (Score:3)

    by HetMes ( 1074585 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @06:24AM (#63365719)
    So, this is a major software company, with a lot of people looking at the service landscape, that is signalling that Twitter is due for replacement.

    Irrespective of your feelings towards Elon and Zuck, that's one hell of a signal to the market.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Is that "one hell of a signal to the market" comparable to the signal from Facebook's purchase of Oculus, or its investment in the Meta Verse or whatever they are calling it?

      Maybe the real signal to the market is that Zuck & Co have finally jumped the shark.

  • You have to allow shit, that is what attracts the flies. It will flop otherwise.

  • Still the most useless of them all? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HnT ( 306652 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @06:57AM (#63365779)

    I remember when Twitter was launched, it generally served a purpose: an SMS/text message gateway from your not-so-smart phone to the web, hence the 140-160 chars limit.

    Later they dropped the SMS gateway and just because it was big enough with lots of user profiles, it sort of became a thing.
    And then it morphed into a screeching echo chamber where kangaroo courts of public opinion and psychological violence public executions are held.

    But it never really served any true purpose or had any reason to continue to exist.
    Why would a clone of it somehow change that now?

    • Re:Still the most useless of them all? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @10:00AM (#63366155) Homepage Journal

      But it never really served any true purpose or had any reason to continue to exist.

      Twitter serves one main purpose these days: It's the best way to keep up with what companies/brands/public figures are up to. It's essentially what replaced RSS readers. Companies may not have a blog and an RSS feed, but they have a Twitter.

      This is where someone asks "why would you ever need to keep up with what a company or public figure is doing?," probably assuming by "public figure" I mean celebrity. Think more like government figure. If you do anything in tech, there are probably companies and products you need to keep track of, following when they push a new version or make some sort of update. Twitter is, essentially, how you do that these days.

      There are quite a few companies out there that use Twitter as essentially the only way they report outages and status updates. If something isn't working, the first place to check is their Twitter account.

      If anything is going to replace Twitter, it will be whatever companies and public figures migrate to. But I don't see that happening. Despite all the cries of gloom and doom, Twitter is still just working. Twitter is as reliable as it ever was. It's not going anywhere.

  • This was the business proposal for it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @07:35AM (#63365849)
    "I have millions of emails, pictures, addresses, SNS. People just submitted it. I don't know why. They "trust me". Dumb fucks.""
  • It's called Nostr
    https://nostr-resources.com/ [nostr-resources.com]

  • What is in it the users? (Score:3)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @07:56AM (#63365885)
    I'm not missing the advertisements, forced subscriptions, incendiary algorithms & U.I., and harvesting of my information on Mastodon. The point of using decentralized social media. The only way Meta-Twitter would have a draw is if they got all of content creators and other people to migrate there. That isn't going to happen unless Twitter completely shuts off or Facebook does. So, what is in it for me or other users?
    • SSO via their Instagram credentials which might be a little sticky, potentially a more normie friendly UI. It's kind of like setting up a new webmail portal at this point with Tumblr, Mastodon et al on the same protocols. Even if Twitter weren't becoming increasingly brittle as they shed staff, the leveraged buyout will kill them sooner or later. They can't make enough money to pay off the loan that was used to buy them at an inflated value.
      • I'm not sure I understood what you wrote. Did you mean to say that the advantage for users in a Meta decentralized social network is that Instagram ( or Facebook ) users could automatically have accounts in the new app with no work, and post to multiple places without work?
        • The decentralized protocol that Mastodon and Tumblr use means that if they set it up right, they could let you hop onto that with your Instagram account, so yeah I think that'd be the advantage that it'd be "now you can talk to {everyone on fediverse protocol} via your good ol' friendly Instagram app that still does Instagram and serves up Meta ads. The Slashdot crowd would probably rather do so on only clients like Mastodon but it's like asking if Outlook for Thunderbird or webmail Gmail are better. They
  • Meta is more than Facebook because they bought other social media sites/apps. Meta does not have a track record with creating new sites/apps. They should let the bath they took on the metaverse be a lesson to them

  • I've been looking for a reason to return to Facebook. Could this be it!?

  • We don't need more of these, we need them ALL to go away!

  • The important part is the decentralized part.

    I get that Zuck makes people froth with anger for good reason but having someone with real money create a platform that competes with The Muskhole is fine by me.

  • They already have an uncontrolled trash fire, why do they need another oen?

  • Yes (Score:1)

    by jhy001 ( 698774 )
    Yes, please! I logged out of twitter last November and have no plan to go back.

  • The world is not driven by greed, itâ(TM)s driven by envy --Charlie Munger (b. 1924)

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