Meta’s Threads App Garners 10 Million Sign-ups in Just Seven Hours, Challenging Twitter

Mark Zucker­berg-led Meta has entered the fray against Twit­ter with its Threads app, attract­ing an astound­ing 10 mil­lion sign-ups with­in sev­en hours. The launch aimed to cap­i­tal­ize on Twit­ter’s weak­ened state due to Elon Musk’s tumul­tuous deci­sions as its owner. 

Well-known fig­ures such as Kim Kar­dashi­an, Jen­nifer Lopez, and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez swift­ly joined the Meta plat­form. With ties to Insta­gram, ana­lysts antic­i­pate Threads could lever­age its exist­ing user base and adver­tis­ing capa­bil­i­ties, poten­tial­ly divert­ing ad rev­enue from Twit­ter, which is striv­ing to revive its strug­gling busi­ness under new leadership.

While Threads oper­ates as a stand­alone app, users can log in using their Insta­gram cre­den­tials and fol­low the same accounts, offer­ing a seam­less tran­si­tion for Insta­gram’s mas­sive user base of over 2 bil­lion month­ly active users. 

Dan­ni Hew­son, head of finan­cial analy­sis at AJ Bell, expressed excite­ment among investors regard­ing the poten­tial for Meta to become a “Twit­ter-Killer.” Oth­ers view the launch of Threads as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fos­ter a more pos­i­tive and less tox­ic alter­na­tive to Twitter.

Sim­i­lar to Twit­ter, Threads allows users to post short text mes­sages, like, repost, and reply, but lacks direct mes­sag­ing func­tion­al­i­ty. Accord­ing to a Meta blog post, posts can be up to 500 char­ac­ters long and sup­port links, pho­tos, and videos of up to five minutes. 

The app is avail­able in over 100 coun­tries via Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. Meta stock expe­ri­enced a 3% increase ahead of the launch, sur­pass­ing gains made by com­pet­ing tech companies.

The arrival of Threads fol­lows an ongo­ing exchange of jabs between Zucker­berg and Musk, includ­ing threats of a real-life mixed mar­tial arts fight in Las Vegas. Meta’s offen­sive against Twit­ter occurs at a time when the lat­ter is undoubt­ed­ly on the defensive. 

After Musk’s $44 bil­lion acqui­si­tion in Octo­ber, Twit­ter’s val­ue plum­met­ed due to severe lay­offs and con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing con­tent mod­er­a­tion, alien­at­ing both users and adver­tis­ers. Zucker­berg acknowl­edged the chal­lenges of man­ag­ing large pub­lic social media plat­forms and expressed hope that Threads could suc­ceed in cre­at­ing a wide­ly adopt­ed pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions app.

Meta’s inte­gra­tion with Insta­gram incor­po­rates pri­va­cy con­sid­er­a­tions, grant­i­ng users the option to hide their Threads affil­i­a­tion badge and adjust pri­va­cy set­tings for each app indi­vid­u­al­ly. Reuters report­ed that the app did not dis­play any ads upon its review. 

Meta has active­ly court­ed social media influ­encers to bol­ster Threads, encour­ag­ing them to post at least twice dai­ly. Oth­er attempts by poten­tial Twit­ter com­peti­tors, includ­ing Mastodon, Post, Truth Social, and T2, have remained rel­a­tive­ly small com­pared to the dom­i­nant plat­forms. Meta has faced set­backs with pre­vi­ous copy­cat apps, like Las­so, designed to rival TikTok.

Respond­ing to a user’s pre­dic­tion of Twit­ter’s demise short­ly after the Threads launch, Zucker­berg cau­tioned against pre­ma­ture judg­ments, sug­gest­ing that the bat­tle between Meta and Twit­ter has only just begun. 

“We’re only in the open­ing moments of the first round here,” he said.