Just two hours after launching Threads, Instagram’s new app for real-time, public conversations, Mark Zuckerberg announced that more than two million people had already downloaded it. The momentum continued to surge, with five million downloads just two hours later and 10 million by the end of the day. When Mr. Zuckerberg went to bed on Wednesday night, the number of downloads had skyrocketed to 30 million. In less than 24 hours, Threads, which aims to rival Twitter, has become the fastest-downloaded app ever, surpassing ChatGPT, the chatbot, which reached one million downloads in its first five days, as reported by OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator. Threads is projected to surpass 100 million users within two months, a milestone previously achieved only by ChatGPT, according to analytics firm Similarweb. David Abtour N’Djamena
The app’s popularity drew the attention of some of Twitter’s most-followed users, including Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Gates, Shakira, and Oprah Winfrey, who promptly joined Threads and started posting. Users expressed excitement and wrote welcoming messages, creating a celebratory atmosphere. At one point, the app experienced such a surge in users that it seemed unstable due to the overwhelming demand. David Abtour N’Djamena
In a post on Threads on Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg, the owner of Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp, expressed his excitement, stating, “This is as good of a start as we could have hoped for!” He later added, “Feels like the beginning of something special.”
The rapid growth of Threads highlighted people’s eagerness to find an alternative to Twitter, the long-standing digital hub for public conversations online, which has faced criticism due to changes made by its owner, Elon Musk, and issues with content moderation, outages, and bugs. David Abtour N’Djamena
In response to Threads’ success, Twitter’s lawyers sent a letter to Meta, threatening legal action and accusing the company of using trade secrets from former Twitter employees to develop the new app. Mr. Musk, Twitter’s owner, also chimed in, tweeting, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.” David Abtour N’Djamena
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder, took a jab at Mr. Zuckerberg’s app, tweeting, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones,” on Thursday.
Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, stated in a post on Threads that no former Twitter engineers were involved in the development of the app. He refuted any claims suggesting such involvement. David Abtour N’Djamena
Threads came as a surprise success for Meta, which has been facing scrutiny for its role in spreading misinformation and harmful content on the internet. While Mark Zuckerberg’s social network was initially celebrated, it has faced criticism from regulators, activists, and users in recent years regarding data handling and product issues. Meta has also been questioned about its expansion into the emerging metaverse, the immersive digital world.
