Mark Zuckerberg to launch Twitter rival Threads

Mark Zuckerberg has stepped up his personal rivalry with bête noire Elon Musk and went in for the kill by launching Threads: a new Twitter-lookalike app linked to Instagram.

Threads is now available to pre-order in app stores for iPhone and Android and is expected to go live this Thursday with Twitter in turmoil after Musk moved to temporarily cap how many posts his users can read each day.

Screenshots on the Apple App Store show that Threads looks remarkably like Twitter. Users can use their Instagram username to post their thoughts – with or without pictures.

Detail about Threads and how it works is scant, although Meta describes it as a ‘text-based conversation app… where communities come together’. Users will be able to curate Insta posts as usual while also posting their opinions and links in the same way Twitter does.

Experts said today that Threads has ‘the potential to become hugely impactful to Twitter’ and is ‘by far the biggest threat that Elon Musk has faced so far’ because it is linked to Instagram, which has 500million daily users worldwide.

Threads has been nicknamed ‘Twitter Killer’ online amid animosity between the rival billionaires who have said they would like a cage fight with the Colosseum in Rome a potential venue. Musk appears to be more keen having repeatedly urged Twitter users to delete their Facebook accounts, calling the social network ‘lame’.