What do Filipinos think of Threads, the new Instagram-based app from Mark Zuckerberg that competes with Elon Musk's Twitter?

Threads, which garnered 30 million subscribers just hours after its launch, is remarkably similar to Twitter, with users allowed 500 characters in each post. Users can also post pictures, 5 minutes of video and reply to other posts.

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“It’s like a breath of fresh air or a brand-new start away from the toxic side of the internet,” Charles Figueroa, a Twitter user since 2014, said in an interview.

Daryll Santos, 21, gave a more muted assessment of the so-called Twitter-killer.

“In terms of its interface, it is hard to identify what is ‘thread’ to what the reply is— it does not look so compact. The font and icons are too small,” he said.

Business technology analyst Jerry Liao, however, believes Threads could pose a threat to Twitter.

“Threads is designed for personal purposes. If the users start to use Threads the way they use Twitter, then Twitter will have a big problem. When people start using Threads to gather news, it is risky for Twitter,” Liao said in a TeleRadyo interview.

• Twitter rivals pile up with Meta's Threads launch

Liao said that while other apps have tried to take on Twitter, this was the first time that Twitter was facing competition as big as Meta.

"Mark Zuckerberg is serious in competing with Twitter--- it has a budget, marketing team, and [app] development.”

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Twitter has threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads.

• Musk threatens lawsuit as Twitter rival Threads takes off

In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of "unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."

The letter 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."

- With a report from Agence France-Presse