Home » Technology » Facebook is working on a new social network to compete with Twitter

Facebook is working on a new social network to compete with Twitter

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, is working on a new social network that could be a future competitor to Twitter.





By VP with AFP

Meta wants to take advantage of Twitter's loss of momentum by offering a competing platform (photo illustration)
Meta wants to take advantage of Twitter’s loss of momentum by offering a competing platform (photo illustration)
© SERGE TENANI / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP

Subscriber-only audio playback


Un giant is never satisfied. Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced on Friday that it is working on a new social network whose description seems to make it a potential future competitor to Twitter.

“We are thinking about a decentralized and independent social network allowing the sharing of written messages in real time,” the group said in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse, confirming information revealed by the Platformer site.

According to the latter, the new application would be designed to be interoperable with other networks of the same type, such as Mastodon, which has gained relative popularity since the takeover of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk last October. Mastodon operates through decentralized servers, with no central management or decision-making authority.

READ ALSOMeta launches a paid subscription to certify your Facebook or Instagram account

A fading competition

This would therefore be a major break with the strategy hitherto employed by the tech giants, who have always preferred to operate in a closed environment and with their own rules of use. This announcement comes as Twitter has been losing momentum since the takeover by Elon Musk, who laid off more than half of the employees.

Among the decisions taken by the main shareholder of Tesla and SpaceX, the return to the platform of controversial personalities who had been banned for remarks deemed offensive worried most of the main advertisers of the site, who have since announced to distance themselves.

The network is also regularly the victim of technical breakdowns. The choice of interoperability envisaged by Meta also stands out from Twitter’s approach to the matter: in December, Elon Musk briefly blocked the accounts of several users who shared links to other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram or Mastodon.


Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.