Twitter is
considering legal action against Meta over its fast-growing rival app Threads.
Threads, which
was launched to millions on Wednesday, is similar to Twitter and has been
pitched by Meta bosses as a "friendly" alternative.
Twitter's Elon
Musk said "competition is fine, cheating is not" - but Meta denied
claims in a legal letter that ex-Twitter staff helped create Threads.
More than 30
million people have signed up for the new app, according to Meta.
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That is less
than a tenth of the estimated 350 million users on Twitter, according
to Statista.
According to an
SEC filing from 2013, it took Twitter four years to build the same number of
users that Threads gained in a day - though Twitter grew its userbase from
scratch, while Threads was able to tap into the pre-existing two
billion monthly users Meta says Instagram has.
The look and
feel of Threads are similar to those of Twitter, BBC News technology reporter
James Clayton noted. He said the news feed and the reposting were
"incredibly familiar".
But US copyright
law does not protect ideas, so for Twitter to be successful in court it would
have to prove that its own intellectual property, such as programming code, was
taken.
And in 2012 Meta was
granted a patent for "communicating a newsfeed" - the system
that displays all the latest posts when you use Facebook.
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In a move first
reported by news
outlet Semafor, Twitter attorney Alex Spiro sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark
Zuckerberg on Wednesday accusing Meta of "systematic, wilful, and unlawful
misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual
property" to create Threads.
Specifically, Mr
Spiro alleged that Meta had hired dozens of former Twitter employees who
"had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other
highly confidential information" that ultimately helped Meta develop what
he termed the "copycat" Threads app.
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"Twitter
intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that
Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other
highly confidential information," the letter says.
"Twitter
reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both
civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice."
BBC News, which
has seen a copy of the letter, has contacted both Meta and Twitter for comment.
Mr Musk said
that "competition is fine, cheating is not" in response to a post on
Twitter that referred to the legal letter.
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On Threads, Meta
spokesperson Andy Stone posted that "no one on the Threads engineering
team is a former Twitter employee - that's just not a thing".
Sarah Kunst,
managing director at venture capital firm Cleo Capital, told the BBC's Today
programme Threads could offer a "brand-safe environment" for existing
Instagram advertisers who "feel they can allocate some budget and see what
happens".
She added that
while the app reaching 30 million users could be the result of an initial rush,
it will likely see a steady increase in users.
"They've
made it very easy to cross-post to other platforms like Instagram, so I think
that we'll continue to see growth," she said.
Both Mr Musk and
Mr Zuckerberg have acknowledged the rivalry over Threads, which is linked to
Instagram but works as a standalone app.
As it launched
in 100 countries, Mr Zuckerberg broke more than 11 years of silence on Twitter
to post a highly popular meme of two nearly identical Spider-Man figures
pointing at each other, indicating a stand-off.
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Shortly after,
and as the word "Threads" trended globally on his platform, Mr Musk
said: "It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter,
than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram."
Twitter CEO Linda
Yaccarino said in a tweet on Thursday that while the platform, is "often
imitated" it "can never be duplicated".
Both Meta and
Twitter have undertaken significant layoffs this year, with Meta announcing in
April that it would cut staff levels by approximately 10,000.
Twitter lost a
large proportion of its 7,500 employees, as high as 80%, in waves of
redundancies following Mr Musk's takeover last October.
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