Threads, the new Twitter-like social network from Instagram/Facebook/Meta, went live yesterday afternoon, and it's already off to a hell of a start. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said via his own Threads account that the platform racked up 30 million signups in its first 24 hours.
That number is just a fraction of the estimated 350+ million monthly active Twitter users there are, but it's a clear indication of interest in an alternative to Elon Musk's bottomless pit of foolishness and bungling. Threads' opening-day figure excludes a whole region, the European Union, where Threads currently isn't available: Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told The Verge that it's holding off on releasing Threads in the EU because of "the complexities with complying with some of the laws coming into effect next year." That's presumably a reference to the EU's new Digital Markets Act, which will impose more stringent regulatory requirements on Google, Amazon, Apple, TikTok, Meta, Microsoft, and Samsung.
