In an effort to unseat Twitter as the global “digital town square,” Meta Platforms Inc. is considering a new social media app launch. We are investigating the feasibility of using a decentralized social network just for posting status updates in the form of text messages. Meta told reporters in an email, “We feel there’s a possibility for a separate platform where creators and public personalities may give timely updates about their interests. Meta’s app will be built on the same infrastructure as Mastodon, a service akin to Twitter that debuted in 2016.
Meta might take advantage of the disarray at the Elon Musk-led firm by creating a Twitter-like app and taking advantage of the company’s recent decision to drastically reduce employee benefits. Since Musk took control of Twitter at the end of last year, the social media network has struggled to maintain its advertising revenue. Once Twitter reinstated banned accounts and introduced a paid account verification that allowed fraudsters to pose as legitimate businesses, many legitimate businesses cut back on spending. The company’s plans were announced at a time when its most prominent platform, Facebook, was having difficulty attracting a younger audience, and when its massive investments in the metaverse, a virtual world in which users interact and work, showed no signs of paying off, at least in the short term. Instagram, its video-sharing app, is also being challenged by TikTok, which is gaining popularity among content creators and influential people. When exactly Meta will release their new app was unclear at the time. From what we can see, Meta has always been more adept at buying up companies than creating their own. New York-based Great Hill Capital chairman and managing member Tom Hayes called the decision to avoid being “too Twitter-like” a defensive one.
They’re simply throwing everything at it. “At least with a microblogging service like Twitter, there is hope that it may begin to generate revenue from its investment on a considerably shorter timescale than the metaverse.” Until 2030, experts predict that Meta’s efforts in the metaverse will not contribute to the company’s revenue growth. In Friday’s early trading, Meta shares were up slightly, at $181.7. They’ve seen a gain of almost 51% so far this year.
