Elon Musk-owned Twitter has threatened to file a legal suit against Meta over the launch of the Threads app. Twitter attorney Alex Spiro issued a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and accused the company of illegally using the company’s trade secrets and other intellectual property. Alex argued that Meta has hired former Twitter executives who still have access to the company’s confidential information and trade secrets. Meta used Twitter laid off employees deliberately created a copycat app. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone categorically denied all allegations and said none of the Threads engineering team was part of Twitter. He said that that’s just not a thing.
You should note that the Threads app lacked primary features such as hashtags, trending searches and much more. You will not be able to search with a keyword in Threads. Hence, we can’t say Threads is a copycat when compared with Twitter. As of this writing, Threads, an Instagram app has managed to garner 10M+ downloads. However, Zuckerberg took to Threads and revealed the app has so far hot over 30 million downloads and counting. He added that this is the beginning of something special but the company needs to do a work of work to improve the app.
Meta claims that the app has been created by the Instagram team to tap into those people who are looking for alternatives to Twitter. It’s to be noted that the liberal film industry in the US has started to avoid Twitter and Elon Musk’s ambitious takeover of Twitter for a whooping USB 44 million.
According to Twitter, the company intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and noted that the company has the right to seek civil remedies or injunctive relief. He urged Meta to preserve documents pertaining to a potential dispute between the companies.
When a popular media approached Twitter for clarification, the Elon Musk-owned company responded back with a poop emoji, which is the standard automated response to reporters. Musk is yet to comment on the possible legal action. However, he replied to several snarky takes on the Threads launch. Musk responded to a tweet by saying that the Threads app is built on the copy and paste function with a laughing emoji.
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino added that the Twitter community can never be duplicated but we are often imitated. However, technology analysts have pointed out that the Threads app could be a significant headache for Twitter on two counts. The first one is the excitement and hype surrounding Threads launch, while the second one is the impressive download numbers.
With over 30M+ downloads, Threads is fast becoming largest downloads ever in the history of mobile apps. That being said, success for the app is not assured. Meta has a bad track record of standalone apps but with huge number of people starting to use Threads, it will not be possible for company to abandon the app.
Even though Threads was launched globally, the app is not available in European Union because of the strict data privacy rules. We have to wait and see whether the Threads app will be hot or miss. However, the app has gained traction among those users who don’t have Twitter but make use of Instagram. The Threads app will be useful for film celebrities who largely use Instagram as their core business point.
