A Twitter copycat worth rooting for

Hi all, it’s Aisha in San Francisco. For once, I’m excited about a Meta copycat product. But first...Three things you need to know today:• A [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi all, it’s Aisha in San Francisco. For once, I’m excited about a Meta copycat product. But first... Three things you need to know today: • A cyber breach of London hospitals is [under investigation]( • Mark Zuckerberg is [under fire from Chinese state media]( • A new effort [bolstered Japan’s chipmaking ambitions]( Sign me up When Meta added its “stories” feature to Instagram in 2016, my friends and I collectively rolled our eyes. Meta was clearly copying Snapchat, trying to jump on the latest social trend by adding posts that expired a day later. We didn’t need or even want the feature, so we were fine staying on Snapchat. Fast forward a few years later and Stories has become one of the most popular features on both Facebook and Instagram. I admit that I, and all my friends, now use it more than regular posts. We felt the same way when Instagram copied TikTok by introducing “reels”: Skeptical at first, and then believers. We even have an Instagram group chat dedicated to sharing reels we find entertaining or amusing. Yesterday Meta launched a Twitter rival called Threads, but this time I’m optimistic. Threads is a text-based social network that looks a lot like the app Elon Musk bought last year for $44 billion. You can follow people, share what’s on your mind, and reply to others. There’s a central feed on the home page, a tab for posts that you like and a tab for notifications. I took an early look at Threads and it has some advantages: - You can sign up with your Instagram account and keep your username. - It’s really easy to follow all of your Instagram connections, so it won’t take long for the product to feel useful. - People who are already verified on Instagram can keep their blue checks, so knowing people are who they say they are won’t be as difficult as it is on Twitter these days. - Threads will have the same content-moderation policies and infrastructure as Instagram. - The app will eventually connect to other social media sites like Mastodon. Basically, users get all the benefits of Twitter without some of the downsides: like [paying for verification](, [limits]( on the number of tweets you can view, a [rise in hate speech](, and so on. Twitter has made a lot of changes since Musk took over, and even though Twitter users didn’t like many of them, they had nowhere to go. There are downsides. Having to connect to Instagram might be annoying if you’re not a user or fan of that app. For now, it [won’t be available]( in the EU. And it does feel weird to root for the already-dominant company in social media. But the current Twitter alternatives like Post, Mastodon and Bluesky simply don’t have enough users to feel like you’re spending your time well by posting there. Meta won’t have this problem: More than 3 billion people use Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp each month. More than 2 billion people use Instagram. In the first four hours, Threads passed 5 million signups. Twitter users have griped for months about Twitter changing into something they didn’t want. But people stayed because their community mostly stayed. Now competition is heating up — and that can only be a good thing. —[Aisha Counts](mailto:acounts3@bloomberg.net) The big story Amazon’s CEO asked his Hollywood studio to explain its big spending. Last year, the company [spent $7 billion on original shows, licensed programs and sports](. Only Netflix and Disney spend more on streaming. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV interview]( with Ben Harburg, managing partner at MSA Capital, on the AI arms race between the US and China. Get fully charged Alibaba agreed to work with its home province in China, one of the nation’s wealthiest, to [develop AI and the digital economy]( there. Twitter settled with a former employee who US labor board prosecutors said was illegally punished for [protesting its return-to-office mandate](. Meta’s Twitter competitor won’t be offered in the EU for now as the company [works out how data sharing]( between the new service and Instagram will be regulated. Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud will step down from her position at the business video software company [at the end of August](. Chatbots, data scientists, software engineers. As clients demand more for less, law firms are hiring [growing numbers of staff who’ve studied technology](, not tort law, to try and stand out from their rivals. More from Bloomberg Get Bloomberg Tech newsletters in your inbox: - [Cyber Bulletin]( for coverage of the shadow world of hackers and cyber-espionage - [Game On]( for reporting on the video game business - [Power On]( for Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more - [Screentime]( for a front-row seat to the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley - [Soundbite]( for reporting on podcasting, the music industry and audio trends - [Hyperdrive]( for expert insight into the future of cars Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. 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