Instagram is already one of the most used social media platform in the world. But since Twitter is still the biggest source of real-time news and updates, and has high interactivity, Instagram has decided to bring some competition to Elon Musk's company.
One of Meta's top executives showed the employees a preview of the company's upcoming Twitter competitor during a meeting on Friday (June 9), reported The Verge. Last month there were reports that Instagram is planning to release a text-based app that will compete with Twitter.
Meta said the coding for the app began in January and they will be making the app available as soon as they can.
The app will be based on Instagram and integrate with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol. It will allow users of the new app to take their accounts and followers with them to other apps that support ActivityPub, including Mastodon.
In the meeting, Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox called the app "our response to Twitter,". He said it will use Instagram's account system to automatically populate a user's information. The internal codename for the app is "Project 92," and its public name could be Threads, reported The Verge.
Meta said the company already has celebrities committed to using the app, including DJ Slime, and was in discussions with other big names, including Oprah and the Dalai Lama.
Platforms like Mastodon, Gab, and Parler have tried to be an alternative of Twitter, but none of them have come close to the popularity of the micro-blogging platform. Bluesky, a social-media app quite similar to Twitter, also hit the app stores last month. The platform which is backed by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, has seen a huge jump in the number of users.