What Instagram's Upcoming Twitter Competitor Looks Like (theverge.com) 13
During a companywide meeting, Meta's chief product officer, Chris Cox, revealed a preview of the company's upcoming Twitter competitor, a standalone app based on Instagram that will integrate with the decentralized social media protocol, ActivityPub. "That will theoretically allow users of the new app to take their accounts and followers with them to other apps that support ActivityPub, including Mastodon," reports The Verge. From the report: The forthcoming app, which, in the meeting today, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox called "our response to Twitter," will use Instagram's account system to automatically populate a user's information. The internal codename for the app is "Project 92," and its public name could be Threads, based on internal documents also seen by The Verge.
"We've been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution," Cox said, throwing direct shade at Elon Musk's handling of Twitter, to cheers from the audience. He said the company's goal for the app was "safety, ease of use, reliability" and making sure that creators have a "stable place to build and grow their audiences."
Cox said the company already has celebrities committed to using the app, including DJ Slime, and was in discussions with other big names, including Oprah and the Dalai Lama. He said "coding began" for the app in January and that Meta will be making the app available "as soon as we can."
"We've been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution," Cox said, throwing direct shade at Elon Musk's handling of Twitter, to cheers from the audience. He said the company's goal for the app was "safety, ease of use, reliability" and making sure that creators have a "stable place to build and grow their audiences."
Cox said the company already has celebrities committed to using the app, including DJ Slime, and was in discussions with other big names, including Oprah and the Dalai Lama. He said "coding began" for the app in January and that Meta will be making the app available "as soon as we can."
Has this ever worked?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google+ and Yahoo 360 tried to "respond" to Facebook. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts tried to "respond" to TikTok.
In every single case, the "response" does nothing but damage the responder's brand.
It seems like tech giants never learn their lesson when it comes to trying to steal the lunch of some service that has already achieved critical mass...
Re:Has this ever worked?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google+ and Yahoo 360 tried to "respond" to Facebook. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts tried to "respond" to TikTok.
In every single case, the "response" does nothing but damage the responder's brand.
It seems like tech giants never learn their lesson when it comes to trying to steal the lunch of some service that has already achieved critical mass...
The difference is that they were all trying to take the rival's user base when the rival was at their peak, if you were on Facebook when Google+ showed up you had no real reason to leave. Even now, if you want to leave Facebook it's not for another Friendster clone, it's for a different kind of social network entirely.
But Elon Musk has been destroying Twitter's brand for months, and he's been in open conflict with many of its most prominent users. People on Twitter want a Twitter replacement in a way they never wanted a replacement for any of those other services.
Reminds me of AOL (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Reminds me of AOL (Score:3)
Jeepers, 360 Septembers in a row with no end in sight.
We shall see (Score:2)
“We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run.”
This is probably a reference to both, other messaging platforms priority on monetizing their service, and recent claims of certain platforms to protect users from 'fake news'.
Meta has also demonstrated contempt for their users, so we will see if they have learned from their own mistakes and from the failed attempts of others.
What a surprise - it looks like Twitter (Score:2)
It also has the major disadvantage of being part of Facebook. So ... I rather think I'll not be bothering,
Probably the most interesting part of the report is that it'll use an open protocol - ActivityPub - so people will be able to use it and Mastodon for similar things until they decide which gives them best returns. I didn't particualrly see a benefit to Mastodon until I started using different interfaces to look at data in different ways to what Twitter could do. I real
Next week : what Twitter's upcoming Instagram (Score:2)
competitor looks like!
Oh boy, now then the joke would be on Instagram.
As if you can't build a platform like Instagram within a week or so.