Twitter’s Meta competitor, Threads, scored five million sign-ups in its first four hours of operation, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as the company seeks to woo users from Elon Musk’s troubled platform by featuring longer posts, a few celebrity backers — and a likeness. big rival.
The Facebook and Instagram owner made the app’s debut 15 hours earlier to 7pm EST in the US and midnight in the UK, making it available for free in 100 countries on Apple’s and Google’s app stores, though regulatory concerns mean it won’t. It is available in the European Union.
Brands like Billboard, HBO, NPR, Netflix, and even us here at Business matters Accounts created within minutes of launch. Early celebrity backers included Shakira and Gordon Ramsay, Meta said, with a recent report suggesting Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama have also been contacted.
Thread users will need an Instagram account to log in. Once they are registered, they can choose to follow the same accounts they follow on Instagram, if they have also joined the new app.
The app is very similar to Twitter visually, although some wording has changed, with retweets called “reposts” and tweets called “thread”. Meta hasn’t been averse to copying competing products in the past, including the 2020 launch of Instagram’s Reels feature, which was noted for its resemblance to short videos from TikTok.
Posts on threads can be up to 500 characters long, compared to 280 for most Twitter users, and videos of up to five minutes can be posted while the post can be shared as a link on other platforms. Users can unfollow, block, limit, or report others. Users can also filter responses with specific words in them.
Meta launched Threads in the wake of another tumultuous period at Twitter, which restricted viewing of tweets at the weekend in a move it blamed in part on data collection by companies building artificial intelligence models.
In later posts in the threads, Zuckerberg addressed those challenges. “I think there should be a public conversations app with over 1 billion people. Twitter had the opportunity to do it but it didn’t quite pan out. Hopefully we will do it,” he wrote.
Reaction to the debut on Wednesday ranged from wariness to enthusiasm, with many praising its ease of use and some saying Elon Musk should be worried. Others pointed out that the app’s quick integration with Instagram showed just how Meta Power it had become. Ironically, most of the conversation took place on Twitter, where the hashtag “threading” was trending Wednesday night.
News of Zuckerberg’s imminent disclosure of the leads has the Facebook founder and Musk seemingly agreeing to a cage fight over the matter, though no date has been set for the unexpected showdown.
Meta described Threads as “a new, separate space for real-time updates and general conversation”, with the goal of “taking the best of what Instagram does and extending it into text, creating a positive and creative space to express your thoughts”. Twitter has a user base of over 250 million users, while Instagram is said to have 2 billion users.
Meta said the app will also resemble Twitter competitors such as Mastodon, which relies on a decentralized platform that allows accounts to be moved to other services. He said, “We’re working to make topics compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that we believe can shape the future of the Internet.”
Meta said it was planning to make Threads compatible with ActivityPub, a technology that also supports Mastodon and allows for social network interoperability, allowing Threads users to take their accounts and followers to other ActivityPub-supported apps.
Meta said users can stop using the Thread app and move their content to another service that uses the same underlying technology — like Mastodon. “Our vision is that people using compatible apps will be able to follow and interact with people on threads without having a ‘threads’ account, and vice versa, ushering in a new era of diverse and connected networking.” As with Mastodon, Meta envisions the formation of small communities according to its own community standards and moderation policies.
Currently, the main feed is a mixture of content that users follow, as well as content recommended by the algorithm. There are no plans currently to allow people to limit this to only the people they follow. People will keep their usernames from Instagram, making it less likely that people will put up prominent usernames.
Bearing in mind the criticism from politicians and campaigners about child safety on its platform, Meta is masking by default every UK Thread user under 18 to a private profile that can only be viewed by people the user approves.
Mike Proulx, director of research at analytics firm Forrester, said the threads were “one step further” from imitators but were launched at a time of “peak frustration at Twitter,” even though the Twitter competition market was already filled with alternatives like Hive, Bluesky, and Mastodon. “This only serves to break the Twitter user base looking for alternatives,” he said.