10 million people signed up for Threads, Meta’s new platform that competes with Twitter, in the first seven hours after it went live today.
“Threads just passed 2 million sign ups in the first two hours,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted earlier. “Just passed 5 million sign ups in the first four hours…,” he posted in the update. The latest post marks the crossing of the 7-million mark.
Whether Threads will outperform Twitter is a hotly debated topic. Some say its links to Instagram, which provides it with a ready user base, will be an advantage, especially at a time when Elon Musk and new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino try to revive the struggling business. Others, however, feel that Twitter has a news-oriented outlook that Instagram, primarily a visual platform, will find difficult to replace.
In fact, Meta just needs one-fourth of its Instagram users to switch to Threads for its user base to catch up to that of Twitter.
In response to a question on whether Threads can become bigger than Twitter, Zuckerberg stated, “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”
He described Threads before as a “open and friendly public space for conversation”. The goal, he continued, is to “take the best parts of Instagram and create a new experience”.
“Our vision is to take the best parts of Instagram and create a new experience for text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind. I think the world needs this kind of friendly community, and I’m grateful to all of you who are part of Threads from day one. Threads is available in the app store now,” he said.
“Our goal is to reinvent the text, idea, and discussion experience for text and ideas by combining the best elements of Instagram. I’m thankful to everyone of you who have been a part of Threads from the beginning because I believe the world needs communities like this one. Threads is currently accessible through the app store,” he stated.
The CEO of Meta responded to a user who asked if Threads could concentrate on kindness by saying, “We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place.”
It’s interesting that 11 years after leaving Twitter, Zuckerberg came back to post a meme following Threads’ debut.
A meme of a man in a spiderman costume pointing at another was shared by the CEO of Meta. The illustration is taken from the Spider-Man cartoon “Double Identity” from 1967, in which a villain tries to pass for the hero.
