Facebook owner to launch Twitter rival on Thursday

Facebook owner Meta is launching its new app to rival Twitter and says it will go live on Thursday.

The app, which is called Threads and is available for pre-order on the Apple App Store, will be linked to Instagram.

Meta describes Threads as a "text based conversation app".

The move is the latest in a rivalry between Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk.

Screengrabs show a dashboard that looks similar to Twitter. 

On Saturday, Twitter restricted the number of tweets users could see, citing extreme "data scraping".