Meta's Twitter Alternative Will Probably Be Called 'Threads'
Meta is planning to release a new social network that aims to be an alternative home for Twitter users unhappy with what Elon Musk has done to the service.
As The Verge reports(Opens in a new window), at a company wide meeting yesterday, a Meta executive demonstrated a preview version of the Twitter alternative, which is known internally as "Project 92." When it releases, the final name is expected to be "Threads," which is the name used in internal documents seen by The Verge.
Meta started work on Project 92 in January and views it as "our response to Twitter." The new service needs to hit the ground running with a large user base when it launches, so it will use Instagram's existing account system to remove friction and allow the personal information of each Instagram user to be automatically transfered over. Instagram currently has well over 2 billion active monthly users.
During the meeting, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox said, "We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution." He also confirmed that celebrities, including the Dalai Laman, DJ Slime, and Oprah, have already committed to using the service.
Meta opted to use the open, decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub(Opens in a new window) for this project, which is already used by Mastodon. That doesn't guarantee interoperability between the two competing services, but could certainly make it easier for Mastodon accounts to migrate to Project 92. The reverse is also possible, but it seems unlikely Meta would want to make it easy for accounts to migrate away from its ecosystem.
If you're wondering when Project
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