The Twitter alternative Threads from the Facebook group Meta broke the 100 million user mark shortly after it was launched. “I can’t believe it’s only been five days,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Monday. Threads is considered the biggest threat to date for the short message service Twitter, which was bought by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Threads is tied to Meta’s Instagram photo and video platform – and that’s also a reason for the explosive user growth. Because hundreds of millions of Instagram users can also be active in threads with just a few clicks. At the same time, the success of the copy makes clear the dissatisfaction with the change in Twitter under Musk. Under his direction, Twitter relaxed, among other things, the measures against the spread of false information and conspiracy theories.
Zuckerberg has already announced the goal of making Threads a platform with more than a billion users. The service was launched on Thursday night in the United States and more than 100 other countries. Threads is not available in the European Union for the time being. The group refers to legal ambiguities and is likely to mean the consequences of the digital laws Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act.
Facebook and Instagram have long overtaken Twitter in terms of user numbers. The short message service once reported more than 300 million users. Later, only the number of users that Twitter reached with its advertising was mentioned – it was around 230 million. Since the takeover by Musk last October, there have been no user numbers at all. At the same time, the importance of Twitter was always great because the service was used by many politicians such as ex-President Donald Trump – and served as a source of information for numerous journalists.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri also emphasized: “The goal of threads is not to replace Twitter”. They want to create a place for those who would never have gotten involved with Twitter – as well as users who were looking for a “place for conversations with less anger,” he wrote in threads over the weekend. Mosseri made it clear that Meta has no ambitions to make Threads a platform for politics or news. Contributions to this would inevitably appear on the service – “but we will not do anything to promote these topics”. With sports, music, fashion and entertainment there are enough other topics for a lively platform, wrote Mosseri.
