As if Mark Zuckerberg wasn't rich enough, his net worth has just jumped a staggering amount with the launch of the Threads app.
But as the social media mogul - whose company Meta also owns Instagram and Facebook - eagerly watches how his Twitter rival app is accepted, his fortune still falls far behind that of Tesla giant, Elon Musk's.
The Twitter executive chairman has an eye-watering net worth of $244 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, while Mark's is estimated by the outlet to be $106 billion.
© Getty ImagesWhile neither are to be sniffed at, Mark's is less than half of Elon's. But considering in May 2023, the Facebook founder's net worth was $85 billion, it may look like he's catching up.
This would be the case if Elon hadn't also seen a $96.6 billion increase over the past six months.
The pair are currently fighting it out with Twitter lawyer, Alex Spiro, threatening legal action over the release of Threads.
© gettyWhile Elon insists he has no problem with competition, he claims Meta are "cheating" and hired former Twitter employees who had access to confidential information which included some of Twitter’s trade secrets to create a "copycat" app.
The pair made headlines recently over reports that they were planning to have a cage fight too.
© Getty ImagesIn the midst of a discussion about plans for Threads, Elon tweeted: "I'm sure Earth can't wait to be exclusively under Zuck's thumb", and followed up with "I'm up for a cage match if he is lol."
Mark responded by simply writing: "Send me location," which was met with another message from Elon which read: "Vegas Octagon", which is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) arena in Las Vegas. UFC president, Dana White, insisted that this was no joke and told TMZ: "Both guys are absolutely dead serious about this. It will be the biggest fight in the history of combat sports."
© GettyNow fans are wondering whether Threads is likely to make Mark more money than Twitter makes Elon, which would be a controversy.
Less than 24 hours after Mark launched his alternative to Twitter, it had already claimed 30 million sign-ups. Although that is only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of Twitter users, it's impressive to say the least.
Analysts also think it's a sign that Mark's Meta has a good chance of bringing in a significant portion of the 3 billion-plus users on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The app won't have ads initially and allows users to scroll through text posts endlessly. "Our approach will be the same as all our other products," Mark said. "Make the product work well first, then see if we can get it on a clear path to 1 billion people, and only then think about monetization at that point."
