Photo credit: Azamat E
The uncertainty surrounding the now Musk-owned Twitter has prompted Instagram to start work on a competitor.
The new app is expected to launch sometime this year, likely as early as the summer. The text-based app will be standalone, but users will be able to keep their Instagram verification and account – while their followers will be notified to follow them on the new platform. This new Twitter clone doesn’t have an official name yet, but the architecture of how it works gives us a glimpse.
The platform appears to use the ActivityPub protocol, making it interoperable with Mastodon and its federation of social servers. The company hopes to onboard high-profile public figures like athletes, actors, producers, showrunners, and comedians to onboard users with yet another text-based social media app.
Accordingly Lia Habermann On Twitter, the new app appears to have creator controls and account security features from the start. Accounts banned on Instagram will be transferred to the new Twitter clone. The app is codenamed “P92” or “Barcelona” and Meta has remained silent about its development.
“We are exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates,” a meta spokesman said of the leak. “We believe there is an opportunity for a separate space where creatives and public figures can be informed of their interests in a timely manner.”
Musk-owned Twitter has undergone so many Frankstein transformations that it’s hard to say more about the platform’s intent. Twitter started out as a quick way to share text updates among friends, and quickly evolved into a public place to catch current events as they happened. Now it’s a place where you can upload two hour troll videos and have society’s worst opinions shoved to the top of every popular thread just for paying $8.
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