Meta working on new social network which could rival Twitter

Meta has revealed it is moving connected a caller societal web solely designed for sharing substance updates.

The app would look to beryllium a nonstop rival to Twitter, with a institution spokesperson confirming it volition beryllium a "decentralised" level akin to different alternatives that grew successful popularity aft Elon Musk's takeover.

"We're exploring a standalone decentralised societal web for sharing substance updates," a Meta connection said.

"We judge there's an accidental for a abstracted abstraction wherever creators and nationalist figures tin stock timely updates astir their interests."

The program was primitively reported by Money Control, citing Meta sources, with much details revealed by Platformer.

While the caller app is said to beryllium Instagram-branded (Meta owns that platform, positive Facebook and WhatsApp), allowing users to log successful with existing accounts, it volition run differently.

It volition reportedly enactment a decentralised societal networking protocol called ActivityPub, which is the aforesaid 1 that powers immoderate existing Twitter rivals similar Mastodon.

What does decentralised mean?

Platforms that speech astir being "decentralised" are hearkening backmost to an earlier epoch of the internet, wherever large tech companies had little of a monopoly implicit the websites that radical used.

Facebook and Twitter, for example, are controlled by a azygous institution - they person full oversight erstwhile it comes to contented that is allowed connected the platform.

But Mastodon, and different Twitter alternatives that roseate successful prominence past year, are alternatively made up of galore autarkic communities oregon servers that unrecorded nether 1 umbrella.

These mightiness beryllium tally by antithetic individuals oregon companies, with their ain rules and policies.

Former Twitter brag Jack Dorsey, who co-founded the institution successful 2006, is moving connected his ain specified task called Blue Sky, which has been successful investigating since past year.

Is determination request for a 'new Twitter'?

Sky News investigation revealed surges successful involvement successful Twitter-like platforms precocious past year, arsenic users acrophobic with Musk's attack looked into jumping ship.

But the tumultuous takeover hasn't upended people's habits to the grade experts predicted. The accelerated emergence successful Mastodon users, for example, has stalled.

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One of the cardinal issues facing upstart Twitter-like firms is that they often don't boast the accessible diagnostic sets and slick ocular plan that helped marque Facebook and Instagram usable by everyone, from your grandma to your kids.

Meta's caller level volition apt beryllium built with a mainstream assemblage successful mind, though assurance successful the institution has taken thing of a battering successful caller years owed to user privateness scandals and criticism of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse strategy.

Other caller app experiments by the institution person not ever gone smoothly, with the likes of its video speed-dating work called Sparked and couples-focused societal level Tuned among those to person unopen successful caller years.