By Mr. Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Threads quickly gained attention online, with Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s founders, tweeting a screenshot of the app’s data policy and Mr. Musk responding, “Yeah.”
A Meta spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meta is launching Threads while facing its own challenges. The Silicon Valley company has been investing heavily in shifting toward the so-called metaverse, an immersive digital world. But the move has been greeted skeptically, given that the metaverse is far from mainstream.
In recent months, Mr. Zuckerberg has also cut costs at Meta and grappled with questions about whether the company is behind in the race over artificial intelligence. In an employee meeting last month, he tried to rally workers by explaining the mass layoffs last year and laying out a vision for how Meta’s work in A.I. would blend with its plans for the metaverse.
Even with those challenges, Meta remains the most credible competitor to Twitter, with deep pockets and an audience of more than three billion people who use Facebook, Instagram or its other apps. Other platforms trying to capitalize on Twitter’s weakness — such as Tumblr, Nostr, Spill, Mastodon and Bluesky — are all much smaller than Meta.
“Even though Facebook is in decline, it still has a massive user base,” said Mr. Paskalis of AJL Advisory. Its large number of users, he added, will make it more likely that its copycat apps “will achieve success at the expense of Twitter.”
Facebook and Twitter have been at odds for years in trying to capture up-to-the-minute conversation online. In Twitter’s earliest days, Mr. Zuckerberg offered to purchase the company, but was rebuffed. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook also made a major push to feature its live products and trending topics in political events and on television.
Since then, Mr. Zuckerberg has focused efforts such as livestreaming video — an area Twitter has also pursued — and trending hashtags to let users explore topics that have gone viral across Facebook and Instagram.
