Business

“The iliad” is a story of glory and gods, revenge and mercy, death and immortality. Squint hard enough and it is also a workplace saga. The epic kicks off with a big row between a pair of co-workers called Agamemnon and Achilles. The gods are the senior leadership team, descending from on high to cause complete chaos. For most of the book Achilles, a prototype of the talented jerk, is on strike. This is a big problem for the Greek management team, who have lost their best performer. A delegation from HR fails to win Achilles over. Eventually, however, he returns to the office, and all is well (Trojans may disagree).The parallels between the 21st-century workplace and “The Iliad” are admittedly inexact. There are fewer swords and spears glinting in the rosy-fingered dawn today; there is a bit less brain matter on the floor. But to see the modern connections to Homer’s epic, look at Achilles’s preparations to go back to work. “Now I shall arm myself for war,” he says in Book 19. The arming of Achilles is the forebear of gearing-up scenes ever since, from Chaucer to Rambo. But it also has echoes of current daily rituals. Achilles puts on bronze greaves and shining breastplates; employees choose clothes that they don’t wear at the weekend. Achilles puts on his golden-plumed helmet; commuters don their Bose headphones. The Homeric hero takes up a shield forged by Hephaestus, the god of fire. The office worker stuffs a laptop and charger into a rucksack. Most of this white-collar arming takes place inside the home, but not all. It also happens en route to the battlefield, as compacts emerge and make-up is applied on the Tube. Sometimes the transformation takes place in the office itself. Trainers are swapped for heels. Lycra-clad colleagues disappear from view and emerge in something less off-putting. Battle may be close but it does not arrive instantly, whether you are the king of the Myrmidons or Barry from accounts. Both have thresholds to cross before the real action begins. In Homer’s epic, Achilles has been sitting out the war in an encampment; his appearance on the seashore is when the Greeks learn that he is going to rejoin the fray. There is a feast before the fighting starts (Achilles refuses to eat; perhaps there wasn’t a vegan option). Once armed, he gets on his chariot and goes to the front “resplendent as the sun-god Hyperion”. For remote workers the gap between their personal and professional lives may be narrow: the walk from the fridge to the living room (and back again, and back again). That is a problem. Entering the workplace means putting on a different persona as well as different clothes—you, but with added self-control. The transition is easier to make when there are clear boundaries separating home and work. Office-goers have many more thresholds to cross. They emerge onto the street in the morning and make the journey towards their desks. They enter a café for their morning coffee; carrying a cup and walking briskly is the simplest way to let fellow citizens know you are gainfully employed. At some point they will have their first encounter with a fellow employee. If they are very unfortunate, this meeting will occur at the start of the commute and involve excruciating small talk on public transport for 40 minutes. Normally, it will just mean that the office is close. Workers must then make their entry into the office itself. There are security guards to greet, passes to swipe and lift buttons to press. Visitors to the office will participate in an extra arming scene at this point, in which they sign their names illegibly into a register and are given a lanyard. Hyperion, indeed. The moment for action is now imminent. Outside the walls of Troy, Achilles springs forward like “a fierce lion”; a cycle of carnage begins that will end with the death of Hector. The white-collar worker must make final preparations for the day ahead, too. The rucksack comes off, and the computer switches on. The salaried hero springs forward, jaws foaming, to take a last bite of croissant; crumbs fleck the keyboard and the carpet. The password is entered, the loading wheel spins, the heart rate remains exactly the same. It’s time.Homer would never have made a name for himself with an office-based epic: death and glory guarantee a more dramatic narrative than email and meetings. But when you put on your work clothes, change into your professional self and pitilessly strike your first key, you are more than just a foot-soldier. You are a tiny Achilles. ■Read more from Bartleby, our columnist on management and work:The potential and the plight of the middle manager (Jun 29th)“Scaling People” is a textbook piece of management writing (Jun 22nd)The upside of workplace jargon (Jun 15th)Also: How the Bartleby column got its name More

Rising interest rates had a direct impact on mortgage demand, which had been rising for several weeks.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) increased to 6.85% from 6.75%
Mortgage demand to purchase a home, which had been rising for three straight weeks, dropped 5% for the week.

A “For Sale” sign outside a house in Albany, California, on Tuesday, May 31, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Mortgage rates last week hit their highest level since the end of May, which in turn weighed on mortgage demand.
Total mortgage application volume dropped 4.4% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Demand is now at its lowest level in a month.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) increased to 6.85% from 6.75%, with points rising to 0.65 from 0.64 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment.
While that was the average rate for the week, a separate survey from Mortgage News Daily showed the rate crossed over 7% last Thursday. It has remained above that mark since then, rising to 7.08% on Tuesday of this week.
As a result, mortgage demand to purchase a home, which had been rising for three straight weeks, dropped 5% for the week and was 22% lower than the same week one year ago.
“Rates are still over a percentage point higher than a year ago, and housing affordability is still a challenge in many parts of the country,” wrote Joel Kan, MBA’s deputy chief economist, in a release. “However, the average loan size for a purchase application declined to $423,500 – its lowest level since January 2023.”
The drop in loan size, according to Kan, was likely driven by a decline in homebuying in some high-price markets and more activity in some of the lower price tiers.

Applications to refinance a home loan fell 4% for the week and were 30% lower than the same week one year ago. As the summer progresses, the annual comparison is likely to shrink, as last summer was when mortgage rates shot significantly higher for the first time since before the Covid pandemic, and refinance demand consequently fell off its high cliff.
While the 30-year fixed has remained over 7% for the last week, it could be affected by employment data set to be released Thursday and Friday. That could influence the Federal Reserve’s next moves, which are likely to include further rate hikes. More

JetBlue Airways said it will terminate its partnership in the northeastern U.S. with American Airlines after a federal judge ruled the agreement was anticompetitive.
American Airlines said it will still appeal the ruling.
JetBlue will instead focus on its deal to acquire budget carrier Spirit Airlines, a deal the Justice Department sued to block earlier this year.

American and JetBlue flights prepare to take off at Los Angeles International Airport, Jan. 11, 2023.
Carolyn Cole | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

JetBlue Airways said Wednesday that it will end its partnership in the northeastern U.S. with American Airlines after a federal judge ordered the carriers to end the agreement, as the New York airline focuses on its acquisition of Spirit Airlines instead.
American said in June that it would challenge the ruling against the JetBlue partnership — called the Northeast Alliance, or NEA — but New York-based JetBlue said Wednesday it would not appeal the decision. That ruling was the result of a 2021 lawsuit brought by the Justice Department, six states and the District of Columbia to block the alliance, calling it anticompetitive.

“Despite our deep conviction in the procompetitive benefits of the NEA, after much consideration, JetBlue has made the difficult decision not to appeal the court’s determination that the NEA cannot continue as currently crafted,” JetBlue said in a statement.
JetBlue said it has started terminating the agreement, “a wind down process that will take place over the coming months.” JetBlue said it will “now turn even more focus to our proposed combination with Spirit.”
JetBlue’s deal to buy Spirit came together after JetBlue and American launched the Northeast partnership. The NEA, approved during the last days of the Trump administration, allows the two carriers to share passengers and revenue and to coordinate schedules. American and JetBlue said they needed the deal to better compete against big carriers such as United and Delta in congested airports in the New York area and in Boston.
But a federal judge ruled in May that that partnership was anticompetitive, ordering the two airlines to undo the alliance.
American Airlines said Wednesday that it will still appeal the ruling.

“JetBlue has been a great partner, and we will continue to work with them to ensure our mutual customers can travel seamlessly without disruption to their travel plans,” American said in a statement on its website.
A spokesman for the airline did not immediately say how American could salvage the deal if it wins an appeal, if JetBlue plans to begin unwinding it.
“We, of course, respect JetBlue’s decision to focus on its other antitrust and regulatory challenges.” 
JetBlue said in a securities filing that it informed American on June 29 that it was terminating the partnership because of the judge’s ruling. JetBlue said the termination will take effect July 29.
JetBlue won the deal to acquire Spirit in July 2022 after a bidding war with low-cost rival Frontier Airlines. JetBlue has argued it needs Spirit in order to grow and better compete against larger airlines that dominate domestic air travel. The combined carrier would become the country’s fifth-largest.
The purchase of Spirit would give JetBlue access to more aircraft at a time when manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand. It would also gain access to hundreds of pilots, which are also in short supply.
From the start that deal has faced a high hurdle to win approval from the Biden administration, which has vowed to challenge deals it finds harm competition.
The Justice Department sued to block the deal in March. “JetBlue’s plan would eliminate the unique competition that Spirit provides — and about half of all ultra-low-cost airline seats in the industry — and leave tens of millions of travelers to face higher fares and fewer options,” it said in the suit.
Spirit shares were up more than 2% in after-hours trading, while American and JetBlue were each down less than 1%. More

General Motors’ U.S. vehicle sales increased by 18.8% in the second quarter compared with subdued results a year ago.
The Detroit automaker reported sales Wednesday of 691,978 new vehicles from April through June, including 15,652 EVs.
GM’s second-quarter sales, along with those of other automakers such as Honda Motor, Nissan Motor and Stellantis, indicate demand for new vehicles remains strong.

2024 Chevrolet Silverado HD ZR2

DETROIT – General Motors’ U.S. vehicle sales increased by 18.8% in the second quarter compared with subdued results a year ago when the automaker was battling supply chain issues.
The Detroit automaker reported sales Wednesday of 691,978 new vehicles from April through June. That compared with 582,401 vehicles during the second quarter of 2022. It also is a sequential increase compared with GM’s first-quarter sales of just over 600,000 new cars and trucks.

GM’s second-quarter sales, along with those of other automakers such as Honda Motor, Nissan Motor and Stellantis, indicate demand for new vehicles remains strong as inventories of cars and trucks improve from historically low levels during the coronavirus pandemic and supply chain problems.
Auto industry forecasters project U.S. new vehicle sales to have increased 16% to 18% during the second quarter compared with a year earlier.
Cox Automotive recently increased its full-year new vehicle sales forecast to 15 million for the broader industry, a gain of nearly 8% from 2022, when sales finished at 13.9 million due to low inventory levels and inflated prices.
GM said retail sales increased 15% through the first half of the year, while its fleet business jumped 30%.
GM maintained its status as the country’s largest automaker through the first six months of the year, with sales up 18.3% to nearly 1.3 million vehicles. The Detroit carmaker regained that decades-long title last year after Toyota Motor took the top spot in 2021. That year was the first time since 1931 that GM wasn’t the bestselling car company in the U.S.

On Wednesday, Toyota reported sales of more than 1 million vehicles in the U.S. through June.

EV sales

GM’s EV sales topped 36,300 during the first half of this year, including 15,652 in the second quarter. EVs accounted for just 2.8% of the company’s total sales during the first half of the year.
The company previously said it planned to produce 50,000 EVs during the first half of the year, followed by 100,000 during the second half of the year.
A GM spokesman reconfirmed those targets Wednesday but did not immediately comment on whether the company had met them. Sales trail production due to logistics and inventory on dealer lots. Further production details are expected to be discussed when the automaker reports second-quarter earnings on July 25, the spokesman said.
GM has been criticized for not ramping up production of its EVs quickly enough, as Tesla continues to dominate the U.S. market.
The vast majority of GM’s EV sales during the first six months of the year – roughly 93% – were sales of its outgoing Chevrolet Bolt models, which will be discontinued later this year. GM has been slow to increase production of its new EVs such as the GMC Hummer and Cadillac Lyriq. The new EVs and their batteries are collectively known as Ultium vehicles.
GM CEO Mary Barra reiterated last week that the company’s output of newer EVs has been constrained due to domestic production of its batteries that’s taking longer than expected.
“When people ask me if I could push a button and do something over, I would have done EVs faster, but I am where I am and we’re going as fast as we can,” she said June 26 during the Aspen Ideas Festival.
GM has several important EV launches during the second half of this year including new versions of the Chevrolet Silverado, Blazer and Equinox. It’s also launching a new electric delivery van and a $300,000-plus bespoke Cadillac EV called the Celestiq.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal News Group, of which CNBC is a part, is the media partner of the Aspen Ideas Festival. More

Moderna struck a deal with Chinese officials to research, develop and manufacture messenger RNA medicines in the country, despite rising tensions between the U.S. and China. 
The Massachusetts-based biotech company will develop those drugs “exclusively for the Chinese people,” a spokesperson told CNBC.  
Moderna is trying to capitalize on the success of its Covid vaccine, which uses a platform called mRNA to teach human cells to produce an immune response against a virus. 

Nikos Pekiaridis | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Moderna on Wednesday said it struck a deal with Chinese officials to research, develop and manufacture messenger RNA medicines in the country, despite rising tensions between the U.S. and China. 
The Massachusetts-based biotech company signed a memorandum of understanding and a related land collaboration deal to develop drugs that will “be exclusively for the Chinese people” and won’t “be exported,” a Moderna spokesperson told CNBC.  

Chinese media outlet Yicai first reported on Tuesday that Moderna was slated to make its first investment in China that could be worth around $1 billion, citing unnamed sources. The outlet also reported that Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel was visiting Shanghai. 
The Moderna spokesperson did not confirm the report or comment on the size of the deal.
“These agreements are focused on strengthening health security by targeting unmet needs and contributing to the ecosystem of medical solutions available to patients in China,” the spokesperson said. 
Moderna is trying to capitalize on the success of its Covid vaccine, which uses a platform called mRNA to teach human cells to produce an immune response against a virus.
Moderna has several contracts to export or locally manufacture Covid jabs for countries such as Japan, Canada, Australia and Kenya. The deal disclosed Wednesday is the company’s first agreement with China.

It’s also the first deal to involve developing mRNA medicines overall, not just Covid shots. 
Moderna in May said it was keen to sell its mRNA Covid vaccine to China after registering a legal entity in the world’s second-largest economy. 
But the company and other U.S.-based companies have so far been shut out from the Chinese market.
Beijing has repeatedly insisted on using Chinese-made Covid vaccines for its population, even though their shots are seen as less effective than jabs from Moderna and New York-based Pfizer. 
The country has also struggled to develop mRNA technology at home during the pandemic. China only approved its first mRNA shot earlier this year.
Separately on Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it held a meeting with some of the world’s leading drugmakers to discuss their business operations in the country.
That includes Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Merck, Sanofi and GE HealthCare Technologies. It’s unclear whether Moderna was included in the rountable discussion.
Moderna’s deal comes as tensions between the U.S. and China rise over issues ranging from national security to a heavy reliance on Chinese supply chains. The Biden administration has taken aggressive measures to diversify away from China in investment and trade. More

Major League Pickleball has named Julio DePietro as CEO and Bruce Popko as COO.
They will work to grow the professional sports league as the sport has gained enormous popularity.
Their priorities include growing sponsorships, building the media rights business, and licensing and merchandising strategy.

Season One Super Finals at the Life Time Rancho San Clemente in San Clemente, California. The Seattle Pioneers play the Los Angeles Mad Drops in the Premier League mixed doubles competition.
Source: Major League Pickleball

Major League Pickleball is getting new leadership as it looks to capitalize on the rise of America’s fastest-growing sport at the professional level.
The team-based pro pickleball league announced Wednesday it has named finance and media executive Julio DePietro as its chief executive officer and former NFL executive Bruce Popko as chief operating officer.

“The additions of Julio and Bruce signify another landmark step forward in the evolution of Major League Pickleball,” said MLP founder Steve Kuhn.
DePietro and Popko will be tasked with steering the league at a time when the sport of pickleball has seen explosive growth at the amateur level.
“We’re pretty confident that we have both the platform and the product. We’re at just the beginning of this hockey-stick growth,” DePietro told CNBC.
DePietro was formerly a partner at Citadel where he worked alongside Kuhn for many years. In 2022, he purchased a stake in the Florida Smash MLP team, calling the investment a “no-brainer.” As part of his new role, he will soon divest his stake in the Smash.
In the year-plus that he’s served as an owner in the league, DePietro said, team valuations have seen 100-times growth. Teams today, he said, are going for as much as $10 million. Previously, teams were being scooped up for as little as $100,000.

With more than 36 million people playing pickleball last year, DiPietro and Popko say their biggest challenge is converting all of the new casual pickleball fans into MLP followers.
The rapidly growing sports league has attracted dozens of high-profile athlete owners and investors including NBA superstars LeBron James and Kevin Durant as well as Tom Brady and Drew Brees of NFL fame. In November, beer maker Anheuser-Busch bought a team.
Popko’s background includes more than 30 years working in the sports industry, with previous COO roles at the Buffalo Bills and Pegula Sports & Entertainment.
“One of the things that I’ve learned over the years in sports is that the most avid fans are those fans that participate in the sport directly, and that’s why I love this sport so much, because we have such a great running start,” Popko told CNBC.
Popko said he will focus on three pillars once he steps into his role: growing sponsorships, building the media rights business, and licensing and merchandising strategy.
As they continue to build the fanbase, DePietro says MLP is just scratching the surface in terms of the opportunity and monetization.
“We have barely turned on any of the advertising knobs, much less the subscription knobs, we think there’s a massive opportunity to leverage a lot of the installed base, the excitement behind it, the avidity of the fans, of the players, and there’s tons of sponsorship and marketing opportunities for the league,” DePietro said.
Another challenge the MLP faces is marketing and positioning more of its players as household names. Part of that effort means finding a consistent media partner. Currently, MLP tournaments can be viewed anywhere from YouTube and ESPN to the Tennis Channel or MSG Networks, which can be confusing to fans.
“The good news is we are in advanced conversations with an A-plus-type broadcast partner who is interested in carrying our season live and all of our content for 2024,” DePietro said.
Media viewership has consistently been growing for the sport. MLP’s Premier Level Super Final on June 19 reached over 975,000 viewers on ESPN2, according to the league.
MLP said its YouTube livestream channel has seen a viewership increase of 500% over last year.
DePietro also said MLP is in advanced conversations with another household name production company to create a series about the players themselves. He declined to name the production company or the broadcaster that MLP is in talks with.
“They’re amazing athletes, some of them have incredible stories. Bringing the human element into it, I think is going to be a huge part in driving viewers for us,” he said. More

Airline stocks have surged to multi-year highs despite a chaotic lead up to the July 4 holiday period.
United had outsize delays as rolling thunderstorms hit its major hub in Newark, New Jersey.

Travelers are seen ahead of the fourth of July holiday weekend at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on June 30, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Elijah Nouvelage | AFP | Getty Images

Flight disruptions piled up at airports around the country ahead of the July Fourth weekend, but airline investors have largely shrugged them off.
More than 63,000 flights operated by U.S. airlines, or 30% of their schedules, were delayed between June 24 through July 2. More than 9,000, or 4.2%, were canceled. Both of those percentages are above disruption averages so far this year, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware.

On Tuesday, disruptions lessened with nearly 2,500 U.S. flight delays, half the number that were delayed on Monday, though thunderstorms continued to disrupt flights at major airports like Newark and Denver.
The recent delays were driven mostly by a series of rolling storms coupled with other issues like a shortage of air traffic controllers in congested airspace around New York and other areas, derailing travel plans of thousands of customers. It upended what has been a mostly calm spring for travelers.
But sky-high travel demand continues to keep airline stocks aloft, with several reaching multi-year highs.
The Transportation Security Administration said it screened nearly 2.9 million people on Sunday, a record for a single day. It’s the clearest sign yet of unrelenting demand for air travel, as passengers book flights or cash in on rewards points and make up for lost time after the Covid pandemic halted trips.
American Airlines and Delta Air Lines have recently raised their profit outlooks thanks to strong bookings. Lower fuel prices from last year continue to be a tailwind for the industry, too.

Airlines release second-quarter results and will offer a full-summer outlook starting in mid-July, reports that will likely include the financial impact of the late June and early July disruptions.

Airline stocks rise

Major U.S. carriers’ stock gains this year are far outpacing the broader market.
United Airlines and Delta are each up 46% so far this year through Monday, while American Airlines is up 42%. For comparison, the S&P 500 has gained 16% over the same period. Delta and United recently touched their highest levels since June 2021.
Southwest Airlines, whose 2022 year-end meltdown drove it to a first-quarter loss, is up 10% this year.

Stock chart icon

The NYSE Arca Airline Index, which tracks mostly U.S. airlines, is up 51% year to date through Monday, outpacing the S&P 500’s 16% gain.

Even over the past week as travel chaos hit operations, many airline stocks topped the S&P 500. United Airlines was an exception. Its stock dropped 1.7% as the carrier struggled to stabilize its operation while storms kept rolling through its hub at Newark Liberty International Airport.
From June 24 through July 2, United had the biggest share of delays of U.S. carriers, accounting for 42% of its mainline schedule, according to FlightAware.

Snowball effect

The Federal Aviation Administration at the start of last week slashed the departure rate at Newark, which led to pileups of delays, CEO Scott Kirby said. When planes can’t depart, arriving flights don’t have a place to park so disruptions can easily snowball.
“Airlines, including United, simply aren’t designed to have their largest hub have its capacity severely limited for four straight days and still operate successfully,” Kirby said in a note to staff this weekend.
He said the airline will have to reduce its schedule in Newark, particularly during the spring and summer thunderstorm season to avoid pileups unless there is more capacity at the airport.
Thunderstorms are difficult for airlines because they can pop up with little warning and are harder to predict than other types of weather like hurricanes or winter storms.
Often, airlines will delay flights to wait for thunderstorms to clear and airspace to open up, rather than cancel, but crews can reach federally-mandated workday limits, adding to disruptions.
David Neeleman, founder and former CEO of JetBlue Airways and CEO of Breeze Airways, said there’s not a lot an airline can do when there are such sharp cuts to airline arrival rates.
Airlines could cancel proactively only to have the weather to clear up, he said. More

In one corner is Mark Zuckerberg: 39 years old, five foot seven inches and, if his selfies are to be believed, a wizard at jiu-jitsu. In the other corner stands Elon Musk: 13 years older, six inches taller and considerably heavier, with a special move known as the walrus (“I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing”). The two billionaires have agreed to a cage fight, with Mr Musk saying on June 29th that it might take place at the Roman Colosseum.The bout may never happen. Neither the Italian government nor Mr Musk’s mother seems keen. But the new-media moguls are simultaneously limbering up for a more consequential fight. On July 6th Meta, Mr Zuckerberg’s firm, will add a new app to its suite of social-media platforms. Threads, a new text-based network, bears a remarkable resemblance to Twitter, the app that Mr Musk bought last October for $44bn. The rumble in Rome may be all talk. But an almighty social-media smackdown is about to begin.Mr Musk’s eight months in charge of Twitter have been bruising for many parties. About 80% of the nearly 8,000 employees he inherited have been laid off, to cut costs. Amid a glitchy service, users have started to drift away, believes eMarketer, a research company (see chart). The introduction on July 1st of a paywall, limiting the number of tweets that can be seen by those who do not cough up $8 a month, may repel more. Advertisers have fled in even greater numbers: Twitter’s ad revenue this year will be 28% lower than last, forecasts eMarketer. All this has hurt investors. In May Fidelity, a financial-services firm, estimated that the company had lost about two-thirds of its value since Mr Musk agreed to buy it.From this chaos, the clearest winner has been Mr Zuckerberg. By 2021 his business had become synonymous with privacy invasion, misinformation and bile—so much so that he changed its name from Facebook to Meta. He then irked investors by using his all-powerful position at the firm to pour billions into the metaverse, an unproven passion project that still looks years away from making money. On July 4th two years ago he attracted ridicule after posting a video of himself vaingloriously surfing a hydrofoil while holding an American flag. It was hard to find anyone in Silicon Valley more polarising.Now it is not so difficult. Mr Musk’s erratic management of Twitter makes Mr Zuckerberg’s stewardship of Meta look like a model of good governance. And although Twitter’s new freewheeling approach to content moderation has delighted some conservatives—including Ron DeSantis, who launched his presidential bid in a glitch-filled live audio session on the app, and Tucker Carlson, who started broadcasting on Twitter in June after parting ways with Fox News—liberals find it increasingly hard to stomach. Mr Musk remains more popular than Mr Zuckerberg among Americans (who also fancy him to win the cage match), according to polls from YouGov. But as the controversies at Twitter have rumbled on, and as politicians have turned their fire on another social app, the Chinese-owned TikTok, Mr Zuckerberg’s approval rating has quietly risen to its highest level in over three years.Meta now sees an opportunity for another, commercial victory. Various startups have tried to capitalise on Twitter’s travails, with little success. Mastodon, a decentralised social network with a single employee, said that by November it had added more than 2m members since the Twitter deal closed. But people found it fiddly and by last month it had 61% fewer users than at its November peak, estimates Sensor Tower, another data company. Truth Social, Donald Trump’s conservative social network, has failed to gain traction, especially since Mr Musk steered Twitter rightwards. The latest pretender, Bluesky, faces the same struggle to achieve critical mass.Meta’s effort, Threads, has a better chance. For one thing, cloning rivals is what Meta does best. In 2016, as Snapchat’s disappearing posts known as “stories” became popular, Mr Zuckerberg unveiled Instagram Stories, an eerily similar product which helped to keep Instagram on top. Last year, as TikTok’s short videos became a threat, Meta rolled out Reels, a near-identical video format that lives within Instagram and Facebook. It too has been a hit: in April Mr Zuckerberg said Reels had helped to increase the time spent on Instagram by nearly a quarter.Threads also has a head start in achieving scale. Unlike Reels, it will be an app in its own right. But it will let those with an Instagram account use their existing login details and follow all the same people with a single click. Some 87% of Twitter users already use Instagram, according to DataReportal, a research firm, so most now have a near-frictionless alternative to Twitter. Will they bother to switch? For some, it may be enough simply to have a network that is “sanely run”, as Meta’s chief product officer put it recently. Others will need a shove. By announcing a paywall just days before Threads’ launch, Mr Musk may have provided one.Twitter’s business is tiny by Meta’s standards, with barely an eighth as many users as Facebook, the world’s largest social network. In 2021, the last year before Mr Musk took it private, Twitter’s revenue was $5.1bn, against Meta’s $116bn. And with those meagre earnings come big problems. Few platforms attract as many angry oddballs as Twitter. In recent years Meta has shied away from promoting news, which brings political controversy and seems not to delight users; in Canada it has said it will stop showing news altogether, in response to a law that would force it to pay publishers. News is a big part of what Twitter does. There are two reasons why Mr Zuckerberg may think Threads is nevertheless worth the headache. One is advertising. Twitter has never made much money out of its users because it knows little about them. Between half and two-thirds of those who read tweets are not even logged in, estimates Simon Kemp of DataReportal. Many registered users are “lurkers”, who view others’ feeds but seldom engage. Meta, by contrast, already knows a lot about its users from its other apps, so can hit them with well-targeted ads in Threads from day one. And the brand-focused advertising that works best on Twitter would complement the direct-response ads that Facebook and Instagram specialise in. Threads “feels very complementary” to Meta’s current portfolio, says Mark Shmulik of Bernstein, a broker.Meta’s other possible motive relates to large language models, which ingest text from the internet to produce human-like responses in artificial-intelligence (AI) apps like ChatGPT. This technology places More