Software

Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new text-based app called Threads. The offering launched this week as a rival to Elon Musk’s social media platform and has drawn tens of millions of users. In a letter Wednesday to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an attorney for Twitter accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app. The move ramps up the tensions between the social media giants as Threads targets people seeking out Twitter alternatives amid unpopular changes Musk has made to the platform. A Meta spokesperson wrote on Threads that “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.”

Twitter rival Threads already has 30 million signups, Meta's CEO said Thursday morning, as Twitter threatens legal action.

Tens of millions of people have quickly signed up to Meta’s new app, Threads, as it aims to compete with Twitter. It's a sign that users are looking for an alternative to the social media platform that's undergone a series of unpopular changes since Elon Musk bought it. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that 30 million people had registered for Threads in its first day. There's plenty of excitement about the opportunity to make a fresh start on a new social media app. There also have been glitches, annoyance about the lack of a chronological feed and gripes about missing features. That raises the question of whether it could pose a meaningful challenge to Twitter.