In a recent viral tweet, Elon Musk has broken his silence on Meta's Twitter competitor Threads after the news of his lawyers sending a cease and desist letter to Mark Zuckerberg started spreading online. The new app has seen a very successful launch, as Zuckerberg has revealed that more than ten million users signed up within the first seven hours, dwarfing the launch of some other popular platforms.
The post quickly gained traction, amassing over 5.1M views, 119K likes, and 12.6K retweets and numerous responses from individuals till this story was published.
Earlier Thursday, news portal Semafor reported that Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta Platforms over its new, text-based app called Threads, citing a letter sent to Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro.
Alex Spiro, the attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a "copycat" app, reported AP.
"Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information," Spiro wrote in the letter.
In the letter Spiro noted the company's right to seek civil remedies or injunctive relief. He added that the letter marked a "formal notice" for Meta to preserve documents relevant for a potential dispute between the companies.
Andy Stone, Meta spokesperson, responded to the report, writing, "no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing".
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has also not publicly commented on Wednesday's letter, but seemingly appeared to address Threads' launch in a Thursday tweet.
"We're often imitated -- but the Twitter community can never be duplicated," Yaccarino wrote.
Meanwhile, Threads racked up more than 30 million sign-ups within about 18 hours of its launch, reported Reuters. The Meta's new platform has emerged as the first real threat to Musk-owned Twitter, as it took advantage of its access to billions of Instagram users and a similar look to that of its rival.
"The cage match has started, and Zuckerberg delivered a major blow. In many ways, it's exactly what you'd expect from Meta: Stellar execution and an easy-to-navigate user interface," Reuters reported quoting Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg as sayingl.
Some analysts are also saying Meta's new app could be a significant headache for Twitter — pointing to the excitement surrounding Threads' launch and impressive download numbers so far.
The app arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk's raucous oversight of the platform since acquiring it last year for $44 billion.
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