Happy Friday!

The MFM will be off next Monday (10th July). We’ll see you again on Tuesday!

📝 Focus

• Existential “Thread” to Twitter

📊 In the Markets

• US jobs blowout: Hot hot hot. Hike hike (hike?)

• Rivian sued for IPO

• Alzheimer’s drug approval

📖 MoneyFitt Explains

🎓️ “Oversubscribed” Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)

📝 Focus

Existential “Thread” to Twitter

More than 30mn people signed up to Meta’s new Twitter competitor, Threads, in its first 16 hours, showing the power of Meta’s Instagram platform, which boasts 2bn monthly active users, as well as deep individual and business dissatisfaction with Twitter as run by the mercurial Elon Musk since last October (an eternity ago.) And this is leaving out all of Europe, too!

.....▷ The stunning speed and ease of signing up using an existing Instagram account (it’s the same account but on two apps) has helped put Threads on track to be the most rapidly downloaded consumer app at launch, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which launched last November (an eternity ago.) ChatGPT took five days to reach 1mn users, Threads took two hours to reach twice that.

.....▷ The “network effect” is the phenomenon whereby the value of a social media platform increases as the number of users on the platform increases. This is because the more users there are on a social media platform, the more people there are to connect with, the more content there is to consume, and the more opportunities there are to build relationships and businesses. As a result, social media platforms with a large network effect tend to be more successful than those with a smaller network effect. It’s what earlier Twitter alternatives Mastadon and Blue Sky don’t have, but Instagram’s Threads, using the same account and instantly adding existing followers, has in spades.

.....▷ In a “he would, wouldn’t he” move, Musk is considering legal action, with company lawyers accusing Meta of stealing its trade secrets to create Threads, citing "systemic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation" of its intellectual property. Twitter alleges that Meta hired former Twitter employees with access to confidential information and directed them to build Threads, violating state and federal laws. (Musk did axe 80% of employees, and Twitter now has fewer than 550 full-time engineers, down from 7,500.) It’s clearly pretty much a straight copy, a Zuckerberg speciality, but backed by the reach of Instagram and the war chest and engineers of Meta.