"100 million people signed up for Threads in five days. I'm not sure I can wrap my mind around that fact. It's insane; I can't make sense of it," Adam Mosseri, Instagram's head, said. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed it.
The Threads app has signed up more than 100 million users in less than five days, data tracking websites said on Monday, smashing the record of AI tool ChatGPT for the fastest-growing consumer app.
Threads is a social platform launched by Meta's Instagram on July 5, US time. Its product pages are very similar to Twitter.
Originating from Instagram, which has 2 billion monthly active users, Threads quickly gained many stars, celebrities, and KOLs to download and settle in as soon as it was born, creating a growth myth that the Internet hadn't seen in years. This time, Threads hit Twitter where it hurts.
Threads, developed by Instagram, is positioned as an app that allows people to have real-time public conversations. Threads also helps promote Instagram, the flagship app in the Meta product line.
"Our original intention was to create an open and friendly space for various communities," Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in an interview.
Instagram is deeply tied to Threads. Users interested in signing up for Threads must first have an Instagram account. The Threads username must also be the same as Instagram's.
Users can import Instagram followlists directly into Threads if they wish. Authenticated Instagram users are also authenticated on Threads. Users can make their Threads accounts private or public.
Celebrities, news media, and top brands such as Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, and Sam Smith are using Threads; in addition, brands such as Netflix, Amazon, Nike, Adidas, Disney and Pepsi, as well as CBS, Vogue have joined Threads.
Attracting users and creators of a specific scale is often challenging for emerging social platforms. But Threads does not have such a problem because creators on Instagram will be directly attracted to creating content, and fans will be interested in trying to see the "idol" sharing on Instagram.
So far, the platform has many accounts with millions of followers, such as Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Kylie Jenner, @National Geographic ("National Geographic" Geography magazine), and travel blogger @EarthPix, among others.
Twitter is thought to have around 200 million regular users. Still, it has suffered repeated technical failures since Elon Musk bought the platform last year and sacked thousands of staff.
Musk, who also serves as the boss of Tesla and SpaceX, has alienated many users by introducing charges for previously free services and allowing banned right-wing accounts back on the platform.
Several rivals have emerged.
According to the "New York Times" report, at the end of last year, Instagram began to challenge Twitter. Dozens of engineers, product managers, and designers proposed ideas for developing competing applications. Concepts being discussed by Meta employees at the time included a broader rollout of a feature called "Instagram Notes," which would allow users to share short messages on the site, and a text-centric app built on Instagram's technology.
On July 1, Twitter capped the number of tweets that non-paying users can view daily, or 600 tweets. Twitter also stipulates that if users are not logged into the platform, they cannot view tweets.
On July 5 (US time), Zuckerberg launched Threads.
Meta chief product officer Chris Cox says some people need a "just working" version of Twitter. In Meta's view, Threads is "just working" on Twitter.
Some netizens pointed out that Threads is a "Twitter killer." Still, Adam Mosseri said in an interview with the technology media The Verge that Threads aims not to replace Twitter; they want to create a less angry public dialogue square and will not take measures to encourage Twitter - political and challenging news content.
Some netizens pointed out that Threads is a "Twitter killer." Still, Adam Mosseri said in an interview with the technology media The Verge that Threads aims not to replace Twitter; they want to create a less angry public dialogue square and will not take measures to encourage Twitter - political and challenging news content.
Adam Mosseri points out that Threads is designed for "public conversation," precisely what the founders of Twitter proposed. With everything happening, there's an opportunity to build something open and good for the community already using Instagram.
It has to be said that Musk is undermining Twitter's publicity. His series of unstable decisions have aroused the resentment of netizens, and many KOLs and ordinary people have left the platform.
Can Threads rebuild Twitter's role as a public square? Can Twitter's woes be avoided? At an early stage, the future of Threads is unknown, but it also brings hope.
Before Threads went online, many social platforms also benefited from the trend of users fleeing Twitter and becoming "alternatives" to Twitter.
On July 1, when Musk wildly limited the flow of Twitter users, users turned to Mastodon and Bluesky, and even KOLs moved to China's Sina Weibo.
After Musk took over Twitter, Mastodon grew its user base eightfold in a few weeks, from about 300,000 users in October to 2.5 million in November. By March of this year, Mastodon announced that it had surpassed 10 million users.
As early as 2019, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey formed a small team to develop Bluesky. In April this year, Bluesky went online on the Apple App Store, adopting an invitation system, and the number of installations reached 370,000 in less than two weeks. After Twitter's "flow limit" this time, Bluesky's traffic ushered in a "record high" the next day, and the download volume exceeded 1 million.
From the perspective of user scale, Mastodon and Bluesky, founded by a small team, still need to compete with Twitter. At the same time, these platforms adopt a decentralized operation mode. They must realize and develop through traditional business models like Twitter advertising. It can be said that among the "siege" of Twitter, Threads is even better.
Zuckerberg is not shy about the possible future advertising monetization of Threads. He said that once the platform runs smoothly and "paves the way for 1 billion users", it will turn to monetization.
Whether Threads can become a natural "Twitter killer" is still unknown. Zuckerberg needs to adjust his new service quickly enough to eliminate the "copy-paste" perception in users' minds to surpass Musk.
