Meta launches competition to Musk's X in the EU
Twitter became X for 44 billion dollars. However, the way the platform is used is changing drastically and is causing much dissatisfaction among users and advertisers. Mark Zuckerberg promises an alternative and launches "Threads" - now also outside the USA.
Elon Musk's Twitter successor X has a new strong competitor in Europe. The Facebook group Meta has launched its short messaging service Threads in the EU after a delay of more than five months. Threads is based on Meta's photo and video platform Instagram. This means that the service can draw on connections between hundreds of millions of users right from the start, whereas other X competitors first have to create them.
Users can use their Instagram login details to log in to Threads. You can also use the service without a profile - but then you cannot create your own posts or interact with other users' posts. Meta left out the EU when Threads was launched in July. The company justified this with legal uncertainties with regard to "new digital laws". According to observers, this probably refers to the dual package of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Zuckerberg hopes for over one billion users
According to the latest figures from the fall, Threads had around 100 million monthly active users - not including the EU countries. Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasizes that he sees potential for a service geared towards public discourse with more than one billion users. However, Threads is different from Twitter and X in many respects. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said that the service should not be too news-oriented. It remains to be seen whether Threads is a direct replacement for Twitter's role of being the place to take the pulse of the world.
Meta's German X account has already shown itself to be confident of victory: "Gameover" was the caption for a picture of a tic-tac-toe game in which the Meta logo won against the X symbols. Since Musk bought the short message service Twitter and renamed it X, the online platform's user numbers have been falling, according to market researchers.
Migration as a result of the Musk takeover
The departure of major advertising customers has also accelerated recently. One of the triggers was Musk's support for a post containing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. At almost the same time, hate speech researchers demonstrated how advertising from well-known brands can be displayed alongside Nazi posts. X claimed that the researchers had manipulated the platform to bring about the result they wanted.
Musk apologized for his X post and explained that he had been misunderstood. However, the patience of many large advertisers was exhausted and they continued to keep their ads off the platform. Musk then verbally abused advertisers during a public appearance, accusing them of causing the platform's failure.
Advertisers are looking for an X alternative
Musk, the richest person in the world, paid around 44 billion dollars for Twitter in October 2022. Even before the recent exodus of advertisers, X's advertising revenue was only half of what it was in Twitter's day, according to him. Musk is relying more heavily on subscription revenues - but according to experts, these revenues have not yet been able to fill the gap. Advertising has traditionally been by far the most important source of money for Twitter. The financial service Bloomberg wrote this week that X is expected to generate revenue of 2.5 billion dollars this year. In 2021, it was still more than five billion dollars.
Several competitors see an opportunity to build on Twitter's former importance with alternatives. Threads is considered a particularly strong candidate thanks to Instagram as a basis. Other competitors such as Mastodon and Bluesky are still significantly smaller than X. Another challenger to X, first called T2 and then Pebble, has already gone out of business.
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Despite Elon Musk's acquisition and renaming of Twitter as X, attracting and retaining advertisers has been challenging. This situation has led many advertisers to seek alternative platforms. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms, sees an opportunity in this and is promoting Threads, a short messaging service based on Instagram, as an X alternative. The EU, home to hundreds of millions of Instagram users, now has access to Threads, potentially giving it an edge over other X competitors. This shift comes as the EU places a strong emphasis on data protection, which could pose challenges for global tech companies like Meta and X.
Source: www.ntv.de
