Less than 24 hours since Meta officially launched Threads, it has already amassed over 30 million users. Apparently, Elon Musk is gearing up to respond to the news from a legal standpoint. According to a thread posted on Threads by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the new decentralized social network garnered over 10 million subscriptions within its first seven hours of existence. The figure significantly increased to reach a user base of over 30 million subscribers "as of this morning," according to the CEO's updates.
The platform's progress is remarkable. Zuckerberg stated last night that in just two hours, Threads would have surpassed 2 million registrations. Putting it into perspective, 13 years ago, Instagram achieved this number six weeks after its launch, as an independent app without Facebook's backing.
These figures translated into an interesting advancement in Meta's valuation on the stock market. Following the launch of the new social media service, Meta's shares rose by 1.48% to reach $295.85 per unit.
For Twitter, the threat is quite evident. A report published by Sema claims that Elon Musk's legal team is already preparing a legal response to counter Meta's new offering.
The publication refers to a letter from Musk's lawyers addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, in which they argue that Threads is nothing more than a copy of Twitter and, therefore, is using protected intellectual property. "Twitter has serious concerns that Meta has engaged in the misappropriation, systematic, deliberate, and unlawful appropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property," says the document addressed to the CEO of Meta.
The legal team also claims that the parent company of Threads has hired "dozens of former Twitter employees" who, according to their suspicions, were involved in the development of the new platform while still having access to "trade secrets" and "other confidential information."
"These employees have ongoing obligations to Twitter, and many of them have wrongfully retained Twitter documents and electronic devices. With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop the Threads application in just a few months, with the specific intention of using Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property to accelerate the app's development, thereby violating state and federal laws, as well as the ongoing obligations of these employees to Twitter," the document states.
It remains to be seen how this legal battle between Meta and Twitter will unfold, but it highlights the intense competition and potential intellectual property disputes that arise in the fast-paced world of social media.
