Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg might finally have their cage match… in court. 

The tension between the two social media bosses spiked last week because, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Instagram launched its own text-based app called Threads.

Threads, which is a rival to Musk’s Twitter, gained massive popularity in a short time, smashing the record for the most rapidly downloaded app. 

Threads launched on Wednesday, July 5 and just 16 hours later, it had already been downloaded 30 million times. You don’t have to be a techy to know that’s a major accomplishment. I mean, it beat ChatGPT, which had one million downloads in five days. 

Threads is a stand-alone app, meaning it’s a separate app from IG and not just a feature, however, it is linked to your IG account. 

You’d use your same Instagram login information to sign up and your Instagram username, verification and followers will carry over. You have the option to customise your profile specifically for Threads. 

The app pretty much has all the same features as Twitter. You can make posts with links, photos, and videos. But one of the key differences is the length. Threads posts can be up to 500 characters long, compared to Twitter’s 280. Videos can be up to 5 minutes long compared to Twitter’s two-minute 20 seconds limit. 

Also, once you’re verified on IG, you’ll be verified on Threads. Remember one of the things people were upset with Musk about is that he made verification a paid option on Twitter. 

Plus he fired about 80% of Twitter’s staff when he took over last year, including a big chunk of the engineering team, plus a lot of glitches and malfunctions have annoyed users.

So it’s no surprise that Threads has already been dubbed the ‘Twitter Killer’ and as you’d suspect, the Twitter team, including owner Elon Musk, is not happy about it. 

Twitter’s attorney reportedly sent a letter to Zuckerberg last Wednesday, just hours after Threads launched, threatening legal action. 

Twitter’s stance is that Meta, which is Instagram and Thread’s parent company, used Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app.

It doesn’t seem like the Meta team is worried though.  They’ve come out to say that nobody on Threads’ engineering team is a former Twitter employee so that’s that. They seem confident they’d win that battle in court.

And Elon and Mark have just been itching for a fight… did you see their back and forth a few weeks ago about a cage match. Like an actual one-on-one boxing match! A lot of people were saying it would be an easy win for Elon because Mark is kinda skinny, but Mark is a jiu-jitsu gold medal champion so I wouldn’t count him out. 

Anyway, while Threads does seem like a viable threat to Twitter, it’s not without flaws. 

The big one that everyone’s been talking about is the fact that once you’ve signed up, you can’t delete your Threads account without deleting your Instagram account. Which is kinda silly considering Threads is supposed to be a stand-alone app. 

Plus, there are some questions about privacy. Threads launched in more than 100 countries, but none in the European Union which has very strict privacy laws, so that’s something to keep an eye on. 

One thing’s for certain, Meta definitely needed this win. The stock’s price ended last week up 2% at US$290.53. 

Meta stock has been struggling for a while because of the pandemic and Meta’s decision to invest heavily in its virtual reality space called the Metaverse. While it was already recovering, Threads’ early success has added a boost.  

It’s still too early to tell if the app will be successful in the long run because Twitter always seems to survive.  Meanwhile, Meta doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to stand-alone apps outside of IG and Facebook. But then again, with all the changes that Elon has made to Twitter, maybe Threads will prevail.

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