Twitter threatens to sue Meta over new app Threads

(Getty Images Bank)

Twitter is threatening to take legal action against Meta, accusing the company of stealing trade secrets, following the launch of its new text-based app Threads.

Twitter's legal team sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg alleging Meta of unlawfully obtaining Twitter's intellectual property to create a "copycat" app, a number of news outlets including CNN reported.

Elon Musk, who bought Twitter last year, tweeted, "Competition is fine, cheating is not," after reports revealed Twitter's intention to sue.

Meta responded, stating that the Threads' engineering team does not include any former Twitter employees.

Zuckerberg posted on his Threads page, “I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully, we will.”

Threads, unveiled as a direct rival to Twitter, amassed over 30 million users in less than 16 hours after launch, Meta said Thursday.

(Zuckerburg's Twitter)

Right after its launch, Zuckerburg tweeted a Spiderman meme for the first time since 2012, alluding to the face-off between the two similar social media.

Threads gives Instagram users easier access, allowing them to log in through their Instagram and carry over usernames and verifications. Users can also choose to follow their Instagram friends, but there is no way to delete their Threads account without deleting their Instagram account, too, at this stage.

The app currently does not have paid tiers or advertisements, unlike Twitter, which announced it would limit the number of tweets users could view per day and charge for Tweetdeck, an account management platform.

Users can post up to 500 characters per post, as well as links, photos and videos up to 5 minutes long.

Hashtags and keyword searches are not available on threads at this moment, but more features are expected to come.

By Park Soong-joo(soongjoopark@heraldcorp.com)