Mark Zuckerberg tweets after 11 years as Threads launches. It's obviously an Elon Musk jibe

With Threads, Mark Zuckerberg is widely understood to be taking advantage of Musk's chaotic ownership of Twitter.

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg made his first public appearance on Twitter in 11 years as he launched Threads, Meta's newly launched text-based social media platform and rival to Twitter.

Zuckerberg’s tweet, aptly a meme featuring Spiderman pointing at Spiderman, is a taunt at Twitter and its owner Elon Musk. The post received over five million views and over 44,000 ‘likes’ in just three hours. Zuckerberg's Twitter handle is named "@finkd".

pic.twitter.com/MbMxUWiQgp

Story continues below Advertisement

Remove Ad

— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023

Musk, meanwhile, left no stone unturned in taking a dig at Meta-owned Instagram.

“It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram,” tweeted the billionaire, responding to a post quoting a 2018 email he sent to his advisor Juleanna Glover, informing her that he had deleted Instagram.

Musk and Zuckerberg are known to be bitter rivals -- and have even offered to meet each other in a fighting cage to wrestle it out.

This came after a Meta executive reportedly told employees that Threads would be like Twitter, but "sanely run."

Five million users signed up to Threads in the first hour of its launch, Mark Zuckerberg said.

The app went live on Apple and Android app stores at 2300 GMT with accounts already active for celebrities such as Shakira and Jack Black, as well as media outlets including The Hollywood Reporter, Vice and Netflix.

"Let's do this. Welcome to Threads," wrote the Meta CEO in his first post on the new platform, which will run with no ads for now.

The app was introduced as a clear spin-off of Instagram, offering it a built-in audience of more than two billion users and thus sparing it the challenge of starting from scratch.