What you need to know
- Meta's Mark Zuckerberg shared a Threads post revealing 100 million sign-ups over the weekend.
- The achievement includes users from iOS and Android devices.
- Meanwhile, rival Twitter reportedly has seen a decline in traffic.
Threads by Instagram has taken the internet by storm over the weekend, crossing 10 million sign-ups. Twitter's rival was launched last Wednesday (July 5) and beat ChatGPT's sign-up record, which achieved the same mark within two months of its launch.
The announcement comes from Mark Zuckerberg on the Threads app, which stated, "Threads reached 100 million sign-ups over the weekend. That's mostly organic demand, and we haven't even turned on many promotions yet. Can't believe it's only been 5 days!"
The easy sign-up process with users' existing Instagram accounts and the friendly, familiar interface is one of many reasons that allowed the 100 million sign-ups. It is quite an achievement for a social media platform, which first aimed to be a Snapchat competitor and later arrived as a Twitter rival thanks to Elon Musk's new restrictions and putting every popular thing associated with Twitter, which was free, and now under a paywall. That includes the verification badge, Tweetdeck, amongst others.
The Threads' achievement includes 100 million user sign-up via apps for iOS and Android devices, although the web version is yet to be launched. While it took only five days to achieve the 100 million mark, it was expected as the app hit 30 million users overnight.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has also stated that he needs to figure out how to wrap his mind around the fact that Threads hit the 100 million mark. He further states that while the achievement is just a start, he aims to make Threads great shortly. If you want to experience the new features firsthand, Instagram has opened up the app's beta version via Google Play Beta, wherein users can enroll and start testing.
Twitter traffic tanking. https://t.co/KSIXqNsu40 pic.twitter.com/mLlbuXVR6rJuly 9, 2023
The Threads app instant hit had made its rival see a decline in traffic, per Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's CEO, implied in his recent tweet (via CNBC). On the other hand, Twitter has already started accusing Meta of allegedly stealing the platform's trade secrets through ex-Twitter (fired) employees while building the Threads app.
According to Semafor, the allegation comes from Elon Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro via a cease and desist letter shared with Meta on the same day of Threads' launch last week. To which Andy Stone, Meta Communications director on Threads, replied, "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing."
