Facebook and parent company Meta are well known for their practice of cloning features from competing services. Whether it’s grabbing audio functions from Clubhouse or reproducing new apps entirely, there are few original ideas coming out of the company. Well, here’s another one of those.
The project is known internally as P92 and is supposed to be a standalone text-based app that supports ActivityPub. Which, if you’re paying attention, is the technology that underpins Twitter rival Mastodon.
Getting Meta with Twitter
The information on the P92 project turned up via an Indian website, MoneyControl. It was later confirmed by the company itself. A spokesperson said, “We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”
Meta provided no further information but the original report claims that the unnamed app will be supported by Instagram. Instagram logins will give users access to the service and will also populate their user accounts with their preexisting user information. The internal brief seen by MoneyControl claims that data sharing between the two platforms “…will be minimal, if not none” beyond the initial transfer. It will, however, use Instagram data to try and grow the new user base. If it comes out, that is.
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Taking on Twitter is a new tactic for Meta but there’s no guarantee that it will ever launch as a product. Given how Mark Zuckerberg is always happy to find new avenues of user information, however, there’s a strong chance that an ActivityPub-powered app will launch from the company.