Meta’s New Twitter Competitor, Threads, Boasts Tens of Millions of Sign-Ups

Tens of millions of people have signed up for Meta’s new app, Threads, as it aims to challenge competitor platform Twitter.

Threads launched on Wednesday in the United States and in more than 100 other countries.

In a Thursday morning post on the platform, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 30 million people had signed up.

“Feels like the beginning of something special, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead to build out the app,” he said in the post.

Threads is a text-based version of Meta’s social media app Instagram. The company says it provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”

The high number of sign-ups is likely an indication that users are looking for an alternative to Twitter, which has been stumbling since Elon Musk bought it last year. Meta appears to have taken advantage of rival Twitter’s many blunders in pushing out Threads.

Like Twitter, Threads features short text posts that users can like, re-post and reply to. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos that are up to five minutes long, according to a Meta blog post.

Unlike Twitter, Threads does not include any direct message capabilities.

“Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, along with a fire emoji. He said the app had 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours.

Kim Kardashian, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are among the celebrities who have joined the platform, as well as politicians like Democratic U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Brands like HBO, NPR and Netflix have also set up accounts.

Threads is not yet available in the European Union because of regulatory concerns. The 27-country bloc has stricter privacy rules than most other countries.

Threads launched as a standalone app, but users can log in using their Instagram credentials and follow the same accounts.

Analysts have said Threads’ links to Instagram may provide it with a built-in user base — potentially presenting yet another challenge to beleaguered Twitter. Instagram has more than 2 billion active users per month.

Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared to respond to the debut of Threads in a Twitter post Thursday.

“We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” she said in the post that did not directly mention Threads.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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