© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Morning traffic streams past the Meta sign outside the headquarters of parent company Meta Platforms Inc in Mountain View, California, US November 9, 2022. REUTERS/Peter DaSilva/File Photo
By Martin Coulter
(Reuters) – Meta Platform plans to launch a rival micro-blogging app to Twitter called Topics, days after Twitter chief Elon Musk came under fire for announcing a temporary limit on the number of posts users can read on the social media site.
The themes are expected to be released Thursday and will allow users to keep followers from photo-sharing platform Instagram, and keep the same username, a listing on Apple’s App Store (NASDAQ:) showed.
The offering is a direct challenge to Twitter, which has faced numerous controversies since Musk bought the company for $44 billion in 2022.
Last week, billionaire Tesla (NASDAQ:) announced a list of new restrictions on the app, limiting the number of tweets users can view per day, angering many on the platform.
While alternative microblogging sites — such as Mastodon and Blue Sky — have seen user numbers rise slightly since Musk’s acquisition, neither has been able to challenge Twitter.
But Instagram already has hundreds of millions of registered users and has a history of introducing new features based on the success of other social media companies.
In 2016, it added a feature called “Stories” to Instagram, or a user’s posts that disappear after a set amount of time, in response to the growing popularity of Snapchat.
Recently, the company’s short video feature “Reels” sought to challenge the rise of TikTok.
Launching threads is a real threat to Twitter under Musk, whose attempts to boost revenue and remake the platform its own image have faced heavy criticism.
After taking over the company late last year, he laid off about 80% of the staff and brought back a number of blocked accounts, such as those of former US President Donald Trump and conservative satirical news site Babylon Bee.
Hundreds of advertisers, concerned about a perceived rise in harmful content on the platform, have stopped spending with Twitter, and internal documents seen by Reuters show that the platform’s most active users have become disengaged.
Mita did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on a similar launch on the Google Play Store (NASDAQ:). Reuters has reached out to Twitter for comment.