How Meta is taking on Twitter with new app Threads

and for more on this Dan Ackermaneditor-in-chief of Internet Tech blogGizmodo joins me now so Dan another dayanother social network seemingly what ismeta trying to do here I mean who isthis for and do you think it'llultimately succeedyeah I think since the beginning of theElon Musk era a lot of people have seenan opportunity to get into the spacethat Twitter had and provide analternative and they haven't reallyworked out whether it's Mastodon of BlueSky they're just too diffused toocomplicated if you have a mega brandlike Instagram which is really Facebookwhich is really meta behind it then atleast they have a chance and a lot ofpeople see this as as the first realcompetitor that could draw people awaybecause it's the right time because itbecause Twitter is really flounderingright now well you mentioned thatthreads is just one of the many TwitterAlternatives out there right now so howdoes it compare not only to Twitter butto other similar apps you mentioned BlueSky back by former Twitter boss JackDorsey I know I understand that theyhave a very long wait list of folks whoare itching to get on Blue Sky so howdoes this threads compareyeah you know a waitlist helps you outinitially in terms of building some buzzbut if the wait list is too long peopleare going to move lose interest and andmove away and other things like Mastodonwere just too complicated to use didn'treplicate all the functionality thatpeople liked about Twitter uh we don'tknow how thread is going to do yet it'sgoing to launch tomorrow uh butcertainly people already have anemotional connected to Instagram and ifthey can carry some of that over to thisnew app including their followersincluding a lot of the functionality atleast I think it has a fighting chanceif only because uh Twitter has made somany unforced errors lately as in withinthe last week right true so this comesas at a time that's a really challengingdifficult one for Twitter I know theyhave a fresh new CEO what is the futureof Twitter look like to youwell the problem is people have beenloyal Twitter users for a long time Ithink they're feeling chased away fromthe app they're losing access tofunctionality and features people whoare verified have lost that verificationbadge has been replaced by kind of apay-to-play system the contentmoderation is just completelydisappeared so people feel it's it's atoxic environment it's not as useful orfun to be on or as informative uh willthreads be able to replace that you knowwe don't know yet but I think thatInstagram slash facebook slash meta atleast has the back end in place to beable to take care of the moderation andmake people feel more comfortable sosame question for meta I mean Facebookliterally renamed itself meta right tofocus on the metaverseseen little tangible progress there evenshareholders have become very frustratedwith the company now it's working onthis Twitter alternative so what's goingon at metayeah I mean maybe they should haverenamed themselves after an AI playinstead of a metaverse play because thatended up being you know much morepopular I don't think the metaverse ideais dead yet maybe we're gonna have tochange the name but these sharedexperiences online through headsets youknow apple is in that game now so it'skind of revitalized in a way but it'sinteresting to me that in the case ofthreads in particular they're not usingthe Facebook or The Meta name they'reusing that Instagram name which just Ifeel has has more public cachet peoplehave warmer feelings towards it warm andfuzzy feelings towards threads we'll seeyet to be seen Dan Ackerman thank youhi everyone George Stephanopoulos herethanks for checking out the ABC NewsYouTube channel if you'd like to getmore videos show highlights and watchlive event coverage click on the rightover here to subscribe to our Channeland don't forget to download the ABCNews app for breaking news alerts thanksfor watching