Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms (META.O), under a trade secret cause of action, for its new Threads platform in a letter sent to Facebook parent’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro. Twitter claims that Meta hired “dozens” of ex-Twitter employees with access to Twitter’s trade secrets to develop Threads and thus take advantage in developing a “copycat” app “in violation of both state and federal law.” However, Meta responded to Twitter’s letter in a post on Threads, with communications director Andy Stone stating, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

In May, Twitter accused Microsoft of abusing the company’s API through integrations with some of its products. This case is similar to Twitter’s accusations against Microsoft, only now, Twitter’s target is Threads. Moreover, social media platforms have been navigating murky IP waters for some time already. See https://oncourtwithsteph.com/2022/02/15/the-social-media-saga-continues-embedding-tools/; https://oncourtwithsteph.com/2021/06/07/were-suing-instagram-embedded-social-media-posts-who-has-the-copyright/.

Specifically, in five days, Threads hit 100,000,000 users. The new app shares many similarities to Twitter, allowing users to post text, images, or videos, and like, share, or repost content. Furthermore, Threads accounts are synched to Instagram accounts at the outset, allowing users to keep their usernames and attain a following on the Threads app directly. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long. However, there are some striking differences between Twitter and Threads; Threads is an algorithmically curated feed of users’ short text notes but there is no hashtag or chronological function, nor is there global search.

Numbers indicate that both Twitter and Threads have significantly gone down in charts, showing a decrease in consumer use of these platforms likely correlated to algorithm weaknesses (slow to learn personal likes, unlike, for example, TikTok’s unbelievable (and sometimes scary) algorithm).

Are you using Threads? Loyal to Twitter? Both?! Who will win the battle?