Twitter’s Challenges Heat Up as Meta Prepares Rival App

Twitter’s challenges escalated, as competitors capitalized over the holiday period on user frustration with Elon Musk’s decision to limit how many tweets users of his platform can see.

The biggest competitive threat emerged from Meta Platforms META -0.33%decrease; red down pointing triangle, which tipped plans to launch a Twitter rival on Thursday dubbed Threads. The “text-based conversation” app’s arrival comes on the heels of upstart social-media companies Bluesky and Spill being inundated with new interest over the weekend as Twitter began the unusual step of limiting the number of posts its users could read.

The colliding forces raise the pressure on Musk and his efforts to reinvent Twitter while rivals try to pick away at the core of his business. Since buying Twitter, which suffered years of losses before Musk took over, he has faced a string of largely self-inflicted dramas in his bid to remake the social-media platform, including the departure of many of its advertisers.

The latest commotion came late last week when Twitter capped the number of posts users can read on its platform, prompting widespread complaints and multiple efforts by the company to explain and adjust the policy. In the hours after the policy, Musk on Saturday twice increased the number of allowed posts, which differed for subscribers and nonsubscribers, and suggested the temporary move was needed to fight companies trying to scrape Twitter’s data for developing artificial-intelligence programs.

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