The parent company of Facebook, Meta confirmed on Friday that they are exploring to build a new standalone platform for sharing text updates which could be a rival for Elon Musk’s Twitter. A Meta spokesperson mentioned that there are opportunities for a defined space where the creators and public figures can share about their interests
from time to time. Without taking Twitter’s name, he described the micro blogging site’s mission statement.
The platform would be decentralized and the users can apparently with their own rules create different servers or communities rather than central control by Meta. The said concept is what Reddit or Discord is offering but different from other Meta’s platform functions. If Meta’s new platform is decentralised, the third parties could be able to build
apps and features in the platform itself giving the users a different experience that Meta could not have been able to give.
The plan is in its early stage and is led by Adam Mosseri, the Instagram head. Meta avoided the question of the timeline of the launch and about the features of the new platforms.
There were several platforms which were launched to capitalise on twitter’s struggle with frequent critical claims and controversies around it but none of them received that adaptation. There is a decentralised platform named Mastodon that was launched in 2016 and its user base grew from 3,00,000 to 2.5 million in the weeks after Elon
Musk acquired Twitter. But, in recent months its growth has slowed down in part as users struggle with the somewhat less straightforward and user-friendly nature of a decentralized platform.
However, this new service of Meta can leverage upon the existing large user base of the company’s other platforms including 2 billion daily users of Facebook.