Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced Friday that it is working on a new social network whose description seems to make it a potential future competitor to Twitter.

"We are thinking about a decentralized and independent social network to share written messages in real time," the group said in a statement sent to AFP, confirming information revealed by the site Platformer.

Interoperability, Meta's new strategy?

According to the latter, the new application would be designed to be interoperable with other networks of the same type, such as Mastodon, which has gained relative popularity since the acquisition of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk last October.

Mastodon operates through decentralized servers, with no central management or decision-making authority. This would therefore be a major break with the strategy hitherto employed by the tech giants, who have always preferred to operate in a closed environment and with their own rules of use.

While Twitter is losing ground

This announcement comes as Twitter is losing momentum since the acquisition by Elon Musk, which has laid off more than half of the employees.

Among the decisions made by the main shareholder of Tesla and SpaceX, the return to the platform of controversial personalities who had been banned for remarks deemed offensive has worried most of the main advertisers of the site, who have since announced to distance themselves.

The network is also regularly the victim of technical failures. The choice of interoperability envisaged by Meta also differs from Twitter's approach in this area: in December, Elon Musk had briefly blocked the accounts of several users who shared links to other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram or Mastodon.

  • Tech
  • By the Web
  • Social Media
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Mastodon