Instagram will launch its rival to Twitter on Thursday, as Mark Zuckerberg seeks to capitalise on a weekend of chaos at the Elon Musk-run social network.

A listing for the app, called Threads, appeared on Apple’s App Store on Tuesday, saying it was expected to be available on July 6.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, has been working on the app for several months and has sought to sign up celebrity users who have left Twitter in protest at Mr Musk’s leadership.

The rivalry between Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg has escalated to the point of a potential “cage match” between the two billionaires.

The App Store listing for Threads, which describes it as “an Instagram app”, has the tagline “share ideas and trends with text”.

While rival Twitter apps including Mastodon and BlueSky have struggled to take off, Instagram is hoping to take advantage of its existing large user base. Screenshots show the app will encourage people to follow accounts they already follow on Instagram.

The app allows posts to be visible only to people who the user follows, or only those mentioned, as well as publicly.

Mr Musk’s leadership of Twitter faced criticism over the weekend as he blocked displaying tweets to those who were not logged in to the social network. He then limited how many tweets users could see per day, leading to the app failing to function properly for millions of users.

The second move was reversed the following day. However, on Monday the company attracted more concern when it said only verified users who pay for Twitter’s subscription service, Twitter Blue, will be able to use the popular tweet monitoring service TweetDeck.

According to data from Sensor Tower, downloads of Mastodon and BlueSky spiked over the weekend, rising tenfold and sevenfold against the daily average respectively.

Mr Musk, 52, and Mr Zuckerberg, 39, who have disagreed long before Mr Musk paid $44bn (£35bn) for Twitter last year, have been discussing setting up a competitive fight in recent weeks.

Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, has reportedly been liaising over the event, which would have a charity component. Mr Musk suggested last week it could take place in Rome’s Colosseum.

On Tuesday Mr Musk responded to a Twitter post demonstrating the Threads app’s widespread data collection, tweeting: “!”. Georges St-Pierre, a legendary mixed martial arts fighter, posted a tweet showing he had trained with Mr Musk.

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