Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta exploring plans to launch new app to compete with Twitter

Elon Musk’s Twitter faces competition after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced that it is exploring plans to launch an app to rival the platform.

A Meta spokesperson announced to Reuters in an emailed statement on Friday, March 10, that it is exploring the possibility of launching an app that can compete with Elon Musk’s Twitter platform.

“We’re exploring a standalone decentralised social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests”, they explained, without offering any guideline to when it could be launched.

According to the email, Mark Zuckerberg’s new app will be based on a framework that supports ActivityPub, the decentralised social networking protocol that powers the Mastodon platform launched in 2016.

With Musk’s platform currently going through a phase of cost-cutting, chaos, and uncertainty over advertising revenue, Meta has clearly seen an opening to launch its own Twitter-like app into the marketplace.

The company already owns Facebook and Instagram but both are also currently facing struggles. A huge investment in the Metaverse does not seem to have paid off in the way the company would have hoped.

Facebook is battling to win users from younger audiences while Instagram is locked in a battle with another video-sharing app, TikTok, and is reportedly losing many influencers and content makers to the Chinese platform.

Thomas Hayes, chairman and managing member of New York-based Great Hill Capital, commented: ‘The history of Meta is that they are much better acquirers than they are innovators or developers … as far as copying Twitter, this is just a defensive move’.

‘They’re just trying everything… at least with a mini blogging site like Twitter, there’s some expectation that it could start to make money out of a much quicker timeline than the metaverse investment’, he added.

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