Ten million people signed up for Threads, Meta’s new platform that competes with Twitter, in the first seven hours after it went live today.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, earlier stated that “Threads just passed 2 million sign ups in the first two hours.” He wrote in the update, “Just passed 5 million sign ups in the first four hours…,” The 7 million threshold has been passed as of the most recent post.
On whether Threads will perform better than Twitter, opinions are extremely divided. Some claim that its connections to Instagram, which give it a ready user base, will be advantageous, particularly as Elon Musk and the new CEO of Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, work to turn around the faltering company. Others, however, believe that Instagram, primarily, and Twitter both have a news-oriented perspective.
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.
When asked if Threads can overtake Twitter in popularity, Mark Zuckerberg responded, “I think there should be a public discussions app with 1 billion+ people on it. It’ll take some time. Twitter has had the chance to do this, but hasn’t quite succeeded. I think 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 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 every one of you who have been a part of Threads from the beginning because I believe the world needs communities like this one. Threads are 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.
