| Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg promised us a cage match. And this week, they delivered.
Zuckerberg launched his highly anticipated Twitter clone, Threads. Musk’s lawyer promptly followed up with a lawsuit threat.
I’m not sure how much—if anything—Threads has to do with Musk. Zuckerberg has long envied Twitter and wanted to own the “virtual town square” space.
In the early 2010s, Zuckerberg reportedly tried to buy Twitter twice. Then there was a rumor that Facebook started spraying traffic to publishers at least partially to woo journalists away from Twitter and earn more favorable media coverage.
Of all the Twitter clones in recent months—and there have been a bunch—Threads clearly has the best shot. Twitter’s best piece of IP is its large network and built-out followings. Facebook has both in droves. When you have billions of active users in your network like Instagram does, it turns out getting 70 million users in 48 hours is possible. And Zuckerberg—perhaps the most competitive person on the planet—struck at a strategic moment, right as Musk enraged users by threatening to cap their number of daily tweets.
Creating initial buzz is the easy part. Now Zuckerberg and his team need to keep the momentum.
I already feel it fading. After signing up Thursday evening, I’ve hardly checked Threads since. Meanwhile my Tweetdeck—a tool I use to routinely digest lots of news and reactions—has been running since I woke up.
In the end, maybe there is a place for both products. Adam Mosseri, the Threads head at Meta, claims “the goal isn’t to replace Twitter,” but to create a “less angry place for conversations.”
In other words, Threads may become the “safe space” for sharing thoughts with friends in an echo chamber—which Musk feels is lame and has no interest in pursuing.
“My guess is we may end up with two sites for two different audiences and different content,” a former Twitter executive told Fortune‘s Kylie Robison. “Sort of like CNN and Fox News. Some people will be on both and some will pick the one they feel more comfortable with.”
It all comes down to execution. As Zuckerberg has said on his very active Threads account, this cage match is only in “round one.” |
