By Ijeoma Olorunfemi
Some Nigerians on Saturday blamed the inconsistencies with Twitter App for the emergence of Threads, a text-based App by Meta, saying it is a healthy competition.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, on Wednesday announced the initial version of Threads, an App built by the Instagram team.
Zuckerberg said the App offers a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations, will be compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that can shape the future of the internet.
Mrs Tinuola Popoola, an ICT expert, confirmed she has downloaded the application and reiterated that the App is centred around building the community of people first.
“If you notice all the products that come from Mark Zuckerberg, like the Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, his Apps are always centred around building community.
“Like Zuckerberg said, he is trying to build community before monetisation; so what I have seen about this is that Thread is a healthy rival to Twitter.
“For those of us that have been unable to find our way through Twitter, this is a good way to start something relating to Twitter.
“Also as entrepreneurs, you don’t always have to look for something new to do, there are existing solutions, systems that have weaknesses, look at those weaknesses and leverage it for your strength,’’ she said.
According to her, the emergence of Threads is a creative imitation.
She further added that while leveraging on the weakness of an existing solution, it should meet the needs of the people, which Threads is already doing.
Mr Chinemerem Ndubisi, a tech savvy young man, said the coming of Threads is a welcome development because Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, keeps implementing changes on his App.
“On Twitter, for you to be verified before now, you have to be a popular person in your niche but now you have to pay a fee before verification which some people are not comfortable with.
“Musk keeps sacking people, Twitter proposes your feeds and he recently limited the number of posts you can engage in a day if you are not verified.
“He did all of that in a bid to force people to pay for the App and all of these discouraged people.
“The coming of Threads now is so apt because in the market currently, there is so much volatility because of Elon Musk and changes he implemented on Twitter,’’ he said.
Ndubisi said that Threads is like the most performing App that has ever been built because in less than seven hours of its introduction into the market, more than 10 million people downloaded it.
He, however, is uncertain on how well Threads will perform because Twitter already has a foothold, whereas its competitive advantage is its existing ecosystem which is a shoot off from Instagram.
“Instagram is linked to Facebook and they are both linked to WhatsApp, so it is very easy for people to inter-network between these Apps,’’ he noted.
Another tech savvy Nigerian, Odukoya Oluwadara, described Threads as a great innovation and a solid competition for Twitter.
Oluwadara said: “Threads has already forced Musk to partially retrace his position on his rate limit policy.
“Twitter currently is not solving any new problems, but Zuckerberg has proven that he is very great at imitation.
“He has clearly understudied Twitter’s competitive advantage in the social media space and is doing well to replicate same.’’
He, however, expressed the fears of data privacy with Threads.
According to him, Threads seems to collect an astonishing range of data including sensitive information that can identify people way more than his competition.
In another account on the development, Musk has threatened to sue Meta over the allegations that they hired Twitter’s former employees to build Threads and on intellectual property rights.
Meta’s Spokesperson, Andy Stone, however, dismissed the allegation saying “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee’’.
Musk also in a tweet on the development said that “competition is fine, cheating is not’’.
NAN, however, while sampling the opinions of people, realised that some have heard about the App but yet to download to sign up, some never heard, while others are already leveraging the benefits of the App.
(NAN)
