Facebook group Meta challenges Twitter with competing app

The Facebook group Meta is competing with Twitter with a new app called Threads. The application, which is now available in more than 100 countries – but not in the EU for the time being, was given the go-ahead.

The short message service Twitter, which was in crisis under Elon Musk, has a new competitor. The Facebook group Meta launched its App Threads with similar functionality in more than 100 countries during the night.

However, Germany and other EU countries are not among them – and it remains unclear how quickly this could change. The group refers to regulatory issues that are still open. However, one will constantly check whether the app can also be offered in Europe.

Two million users within two hours

Threads is tied to Meta’s popular photo and video app, Instagram, and is considered to be Twitter’s most promising competitor. The reason for this is a head start: Meta can draw on existing connections between more than a billion users for its Twitter copy right from the start. With other Twitter competitors such as Bluesky and T2, such links have to be created from scratch.

According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, two million users joined the platform in the first two hours of the app’s release. Instagram users can easily apply their profile to the photo app for threads.

Text posts on threads can be up to 500 characters long and can contain links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long. When Twitter was launched in 2006, the text limit was originally 140 characters and was later doubled to 280 characters.

Stricter EU rules deter Meta

With regard to the EU, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri pointed out that it was complicated “to comply with some laws that will take effect in the coming year”. They didn’t want to launch any app in Europe that wasn’t future-proof, he told the technology blog “The Verge”.

Mosseri might mean the Digital Markets Act, which sets stricter rules for online platforms. Among other things, the merging of data from different services is becoming more difficult. Until Threads is launched in the EU, users from the region can view posts in a web view, but cannot share or like them.