"Twitter Threatens Legal Action Against Meta Over Alleged Misappropriation of Trade Secrets in New Text-Based Platform threads

Twitteris threatening legal action against Meta over its new text-based “Twitter killer” platform, accusing the social media giant of poaching former employees to create a “copycat” application. On Wednesday, Instagram parent company Meta introduced Threads, a text-based companion to Instagram that resembles Twitter and other text-based social platforms. Just hours later, a lawyer for Twitter, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of engaging in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.” “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Spiro wrote in a letter obtained exclusively by Semafor. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.” Spiro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.” He also alleged that Meta assigned those employees to develop “Meta’s copyInstagramcat ‘Threads’ app with the specific intent that they use Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Meta’s competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees’ ongoing obligations to Twitter.”

"Meta's Threads Emerges as a Serious Competitor to Twitter, Gaining 30 Million Users in First Day; Poised to Challenge Twitter's User Base and Ad Revenue"

Threads may be the most serious threat yet to take users (and ad dollars) away from Twitter. Meta has the resources to commit serious time and money to competing with Twitter. And it has a built-in network of billions of Instagram users to build on: Threads lets users immediately find and port over their Instagram followers instead of rebuilding their network from scratch. Meta also has long experience hobbling rivals with successful copycats. Instagram Stories stopped Snapchat’s growth, while Reels is muscling through as a TikTok rival.

On Thursday, Zuckerberg announced that Threads had already signed up 30 million users in its first day, vastly dwarfing competitors. (Bluesky last reported that it had 50,000 users.)