Topline
More than 5 million people signed up to join Meta’s new “Threads” app within the first four hours of its launch on Wednesday, the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced, an early sign that the Instagram offshoot may pose a serious threat to Twitter, which has recently been marred by technical glitches and unpopular changes.
Meta rolled out its Twitter-clone Threads in more than 100 countries on Wednesday.
Key Facts
In the first two hours after its launch, around 2 million people signed up for Meta’s Twitter rival, and in the next two hours that number grew to 5 million, Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads.
Unlike other Twitter rivals like Mastodon—which has a complex sign up process—or BlueSky—which requires invites—Threads allows users to sign up for the app and populate their profile and follow lists using their Instagram account.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk—who has recently been critical of Meta and Zuckerberg—reacted to Threads’ launch by implying that the app was nothing but a copy-paste of Twitter’s design.
Musk also tweeted that it was “infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.”
Crucial Quote
In an interview with Verge, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said: “I think it’d be a mistake to underestimate both Twitter and Elon…I do think there’s a lot more noise around Twitter than there was. Just the volatility and the unpredictability of what seemed to be going on there seemed like it might present an opportunity.”
