We know that Meta holds a lot of power in the social media world. It owns the ever-popular Facebook and Instagram. Well, it looks like the company wants to step on Twitter’s toes with an upcoming decentralized competitor. This Meta platform has the internal codename P92.
Over the past several months, we’ve been hearing a lot about Twitter alternatives. People flocked away from the Bird App en masse as Elon Musk took it over and had his way with it. Now, Alternatives like Mastodon are on their way to being major platforms.
Even though Twitter is getting back on its feet, people are still looking for other platforms for their micro-blogging needs. Because of this, Twitter is going to need to be aware of the competition.
And Meta could bring that competition in the form of P92
People close to the matter told MoneyControl that Meta was working on a Twitter alternative. Later, a Meta spokesperson confirmed the information. At this point, we don’t know too much about this platform, but there are a few key facts.
For starters, Meta P92 will be a decentralized platform, and that’s probably the most interesting fact. P92 will support the ActivityPub. This is the decentralized protocol that platforms like Mastodon are based on.
Meta P92 will be a standalone platform, but the sources say that it will be Instagram-branded. That’s weird, as this is going to be a platform that’s primarily for text-based updates. We don’t associate Instagram with text-based communication. It’s primarily a photo/video-based platform.
Maybe it’ll be marketed as an extended Instagram experience. You could post your photos and videos as you would on Instagram, but you’ll also post your text updates along with the content. That’s only speculation, however.
You can add text to your posts on Instagram now, but you can’t really interact with it. Users can’t natively select text to copy. Also, you can’t add links to your posts easily.
At this point, we don’t know if the company is actively building the platform or if it’s still in the planning stage. We should hear more about this ambition as time goes on. Hopefully, Twitter will be prepared for it.
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