Amidst the flurry of a new Twitter CEO, Instagram is planning a rival alternative…
A week into the job, Musk’s hand-picked successor, Yaccarino, wrote “Game on” in a tweet accompanied by a link to a TechCrunch article about Meta-owned Instagram’s Twitter clone. That article includes a tweet by Lia Haberman, author of social media newsletter ICYMI, showing what is reportedly a screenshot of the new app.
Instagram’s Twitter competitor would be a decentralised app “built on the back of Instagram but will be compatible with some other apps like Mastodon.” Haberman added there’s a single sign-on with your Instagram username and password, you can sync up with your existing followers, and your handle, bio and verification will carry over from Instagram.
Meta’s isn’t the first Twitter alternative app but its success rates are higher; being Meta, it will have one enormous advantage: access to billions of users through Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger, all of which it owns.
This competition from Meta makes Yaccarino’s job all the more difficult as she must persuade advertisers who reduced their activities on Twitter to take a second look. Many feared a spike in objectionable content under the ownership of Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist.”
Having said that, many see Yaccarino as a high promise for the future of Twitter. While Musk has pushed for more subscription revenue, Twitter has long relied on advertising as its main source of revenue. Wedbush Securities Managing Director Daniel Ives told Reuters that Musk’s appointment of Yaccarino was a “home-run hire,” noting, “This is someone who’s going to be much more aggressive on advertising.”
She’ll also be unafraid to challenge Musk, judging by her performance interviewing him last month onstage at a Possible marketing conference in Florida. She aggressively questioned him about the concerns of advertisers and even got him to promise he would “aspire to tweet less after 3 a.m.”
