Threads, the ‘Twitter-killer’ Meta app, recorded 10 million active users in just the first seven hours of its launch, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, just two hours after the app’s launch, Zuckerberg revealed that it had been downloaded two million times. Threads thus broke the record held by ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot by OpenAI, which had one million active users within five days of its launch in November 2022.
And in less than 24 hours since it went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 2300 GMT on 5 July, Threads, which is an extension of Instagram, had been downloaded 30 million times, according to a report by The New York Times (NYT).
Threads on track to break another ChatGPT record
Declaring Threads as a “surprise hit,” the NYT report cited data from analytics firm Similarweb saying that Threads is on target to break ChatGPT’s record of 100 million active users which the latter achieved in just two months.
AFP, however, underlined that Threads had the advantage of being a “clear spin-off of Instagram” with the latter’s active audience of over two billion users. This, according to AFP, spared the new platform the challenge of gaining users from scratch.
‘The beginning of something special’
Nevertheless, Zuckerberg is in a celebratory mood.
“This is as good of a start as we could have hoped for!” said Zuckerberg in a Threads post, later adding, “Feels like the beginning of something special.”
With some detractors claiming that Threads is a copy of Twitter, Zuckerberg took to his official Twitter account for the first time in a decade taking a jibe at naysayers by posting a popular Spider-Man meme.
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
Indeed, several prominent celebrities, including Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Hugh Jackman, Ellen DeGeneres, and Oprah Winfrey, have already garnered a massive following on Threads.
“Welcome to Gay Twitter!” wrote Ellen DeGeneres in her first Threads post on 6 July. In less than 24 hours, it had received around 30,000 likes.
Twitter threatens to sue Meta
Reports suggest that the Threads app will not be running ads for now but it has certainly emerged as the biggest challenger yet to Elon Musk-owned Twitter, which has now threatened the Meta over its newly launched social media platform.
According to Semafor, Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Twitter, has sent a letter to Zuckerberg accusing his company of engaging in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” the letter, which was obtained by Semafor reads.
Twitter has also accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, said in a Threads post that Meta had not hired any former Twitter engineers.
Musk, too, took a jibe at Meta in a tweet while responding to a story about Twitter’s threat to Meta.
“Competition is fine, cheating is not,” he tweeted.
Competition is fine, cheating is not
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023
Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey also aimed at Zuckerberg in a tweet reading, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones.”
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones.” https://t.co/MavyysZCcP
— jack (@jack) July 6, 2023
But Twitter is not only struggling with competitors and its falling worth, Musk, according to NYT, has “angered the social platform’s longtime users, especially those who do not care for his laissez-faire approach to content moderation.”
(Hero image: Threads by Instagram via Play Store; Featured image: Threads by Instagram via Play Store; ilgmyzin/@ilgmyzin/Unsplash)
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Manas Sen Gupta writes at the intersection of tech, entertainment and history. His works have appeared in publications such as The Statesman, Myanmar Matters, Hindustan Times and News18/ETV. In his spare time, Manas loves studying interactive charts and topographic maps. When not doing either, he prefers reading detective fiction. Spring is his favourite season and he can happily eat a bowl of noodles any time of the day.
