At a gathering of Meta staff last week, Chris Cox, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants, unveiled what he called “our response to Twitter”.
The product chief showed off what has internally been codenamed “Project 92”, or in some iterations “Barcelona”: a prototype app that the Facebook-developer hopes will finally kill its rival.
The app is expected to be called Threads and screenshots suggest it will feature a continuous scroll of text like Twitter with buttons similar to the Like and Retweet functions, according to technology news site The Verge.
Zuckerberg’s company is already courting celebrities and influencers to test the app. Meta has been negotiating with TV host Oprah Winfrey and Tibetan religious leader the Dalai Lama to open accounts, hoping that high-profile early users can help tempt the masses to join.
“I know for a fact they’ve been talking to a British celebrity, and some US big name stars,” says Matt Navarra, a social media consultant.
A launch of the new app could come as soon as “the end of the month or beginning of next month, they have been onboarding people for a little while”, he claims.