Meta is in the early stages of building a decentralised, standalone dedicated app for people to post text-based updates to rival Elon Musk’s Twitter, reported the Platformer.
“We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates,” the company told Platformer exclusively in an email.
“We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”
Details about the project are scant. The product is still in its earliest stages, sources said, and there is no time frame for it being released. But legal and regulatory teams have already started to investigate potential privacy concerns around the app so they can be addressed before launch, we’re told.
Meanwhile, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has also launched new social media platform Bluesky to rival the bird app.
Bluesky is based on the principle of allowing users to build a shared and open social media platform.
Bluesky, a Twitter alternative which has Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey as one of its, has been launched on the Apple App Store, on an invite-only basis.
Also read: Should You Pay For Meta’s And Twitter’s Verified Identity Subscriptions
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by Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University
Social media services have generally been free of charge for users, but now, with ad revenues slowing down, social media companies are looking for new revenue streams beyond targeted ads. Now, Twitter is charging for its blue check verification, and Meta and Twitter both charge for identity protection.
Users benefit from “free” services such as social media platforms. According to one study, in the U.S., Facebook users say they would have to be paid in the range of $40 to $50 to leave the social networking service for one month. If you value Facebook highly enough that you’d need to get paid to take a break, why not pay for these new services if you can afford them?
Meta plans to offer paid customer support and account monitoring on Facebook and Instagram to guard against impersonators for US$11.99 a month on the web and $14.99 a month on iOS devices. Twitter’s proposed changes make two-factor authentication via text messaging a premium feature for paid users. Twitter Blue costs $8 a month on Android devices and $11 a month on iOS devices.
As a researcher who studies social media and artificial intelligence, I see three problems with the rollout of these features.
