Meta is already in the ring. The internet giant launched at 23:00 GMT this Wednesday its long-awaited social network to compete with Twitter, Threads, and within the first seven hours it has reached 10 million users. The rapid take-off of the new app, which enables real-time text-based public conversations, is largely due to the fact that the social network is connected to Instagram, which has more than 2 billion monthly active users worldwide. .

The thread has been released in over 100 countries, including the US and UK, but not in the EU, despite being one of Meta’s biggest markets, due, as the company explains, to regulatory uncertainty about the use of personal data by the service. The EU will implement in the coming months the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which limits how tech giants share user data between services and prohibits granting self-granted preferential access to contiguous markets.

Something that could tie into the way Threads operates, as those interested in signing up for the new app should have, at least for now, an Instagram account, something that makes it easy for users to transfer their usernames and followers to the new social Meta network. The link between these two platforms helps Threads (Threads in Spanish). get to scale quickly.

The launch of Threads in the EU currently has no date. Meta has assured that it is awaiting further clarification from the European Commission on how the law will be implemented before launching its new app in the 27-country bloc.

And Mark Zuckerberg’s company faces other issues regarding compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the new Digital Services Act (DSA). Both regulations state that Meta needs to request and obtain special permission to process sensitive user data before using their personal data to deliver targeted advertisements to them. And, according to information provided by multinationals about Threads, the new social network can collect highly confidential data about users to create profiles of their digital activity, including financial and health data, location, browsing history, contacts and other information. .

As if that weren’t enough, also last May the Irish data regulator fined Facebook 1.2 billion euros for privacy breaches and gave it a maximum period of five months for the company to stop transferring data from European users to the US. in order to apply to all Meta services.

Twitter Low Hours

The new social network, which has been dubbed the “Twitter killer” by some users, wants to take advantage of Elon Musk’s social network’s quiet hours. Twitter users have been increasingly critical of the decision by Tesla’s owner, who is looking for a formula to make the bird’s social network profitable. Among them, introducing a premium service for $ 8 per month with several features that were previously free and limiting the number of tweets that users can read to combat bots.

Jasmine Enberg, Principal Analyst at Insider Intelligence, thinks Twitter is “deeply hurt” and Threads could deal another blow to it. “Twitter users desperately need an alternative, and Musk has given Zuckerberg a chance. While it’s hard to imagine avid Twitter users turning to Threads, many people are frustrated enough by Musk’s recent limitations to give Threads a try.” According to Enberg, Meta only needs about one in four Instagram users to use Threads each month to make it as big as Twitter.”

Zuckerberg has said that it will take time to get there, but there has to be a public chat app with over 1 billion people and, for that, Threads should “stay friendly as you grow”.

The big question now is how Threads will be monetized. “Ads are Meta’s bread and butter, so it was the obvious choice. But the release of Threads has raised privacy concerns, and that could have implications for Threads’ rollout to consumers and its monetization strategy.” Subscriptions and paid content would be another great option, given the focus on creators. Meta is already starting to experiment with both on Instagram, and maybe Meta could take a similar approach to Threads,” added Enberg.

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