Few weeks back, Meta boss, Mark Zuckerberg, had challenged Tesla and Twitter boss, Elon Musk, to a friendly cage fight. Despite being a neophyte in combat, Musk accepted the challenge and showed his willingness to train as much as it would require him to be able take-on Zuckerberg who on the contrary is well groomed and decorated in Jitsu.
The proposed faceoff between Zuckerberg and Musk picked a lot of people’s interest and raised positive reactions in the media. Many internet users across different social media platforms said they could not wait to see the duo get physical and exhibit their combat skills on stage to the amusement of their viewers.
But it appears the dynamic between the two entrepreneurs is currently taking a different turn. Twitter has recently made a law suit threat to Meta for alleged copyright infringement following Meta’s unveiling of its new social networking platform, Thread, which provides alternative services of the twitter’s. Daubed the copycat app, Thread has been alleged to have been crafted out of Twitter’s trade secret. Twitter’s team of lawyers claimed in a letter sent to Zuckerberg that Meta recruited former Twitter employees who used twitter trade secrets to develop thread.
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In a tweet, Musk conveyed his dissatisfaction at the revelation, saying: ” competition is fine. But cheating is not.”
However, Twitter’s claim that Meta enlisted its former employees who championed the development of the thread app, regardless of its correctness and legal implication, underscores the importance of human resource in the survivability and sustainability of a business. Apparently, when people move from companies to companies within the same industry, they move along with knowledge and insights which they consciously or unconsciously use to help their new companies to have a competitive edge.
Could Zuckerberg’s combat challenge with Musk be interpreted as a metaphor foreshadowing what is to transpire between the two social media behemoths, Twitter and Meta? My answer is an emphatic Yes.
It is like picturing the earliest periods of the ancient Chinese and Japanese dynasties where two great generals of two great empires invite each other for a fun game in preparation for a battle or partnership between the two empires at an unknown time in the future.
Meanwhile, Musk’s SpaceX business continues to grow.
Twitter and Tesla have had their ups and downs, but it’s been smoother sailing at another Elon Musk-led firm: SpaceX. The company is effectively monopolizing the global space market thanks to “a proven fleet of reusable rockets that can fly at a pace that rivals can’t match,” The Wall Street Journal writes. It has led 21 launches for outside clients so far this year — almost two-thirds of the world’s commercial space flights — and Musk has estimated that SpaceX will account for 80% of the mass that makes it into orbit in 2023. SpaceX-owned Starlink internet satellites had to “swerve more than 25,000 times” from December 2022 through May 2023 to stay clear of potential collisions, according to a new regulatory report.