© Reuters. The Meta Threads app and Twitter logos are seen in this illustration taken July 4, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Written by Katie Paul
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday launched a live challenge to Twitter with Thread, garnering millions of users in a matter of hours, as it sought to capitalize on its rival’s extremely weak state after a string of chaotic decisions from its owner, Elon Musk.
Among those rushing to join the new Meta platform are celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez as well as high-profile politicians like US Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, along with a fire emoji. He said the app recorded 5 million subscriptions in the first four hours.
Then he took to Twitter, where he posted a well-known meme of Spider-Man versus Spider-Man — in a humorous jab at Musk’s rivalry between the two services.
Analysts said Instagram’s leads could give it a combined user base and advertising rig. That could siphon advertising dollars from Twitter as a new CEO tries to revive its ailing business.
While Themes launches as a standalone app, users can log in with their Instagram credentials and follow the same accounts, making it an easy addition to the existing habits of Instagram’s more than 2 billion monthly active users.
“Investors can’t help but get a little excited about the possibility that Meta really has a ‘Twitter-Killer’,” said Danny Hewson, head of financial analysis at investment firm AJ Bell.
Others saw launching threads as an opportunity to create a less toxic version of Twitter.
“I hope this platform has a good vibe, strong community, excellent sense of humor, and less harassment,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her post.
Much like Twitter, the app features short text posts that users can like, repost, and reply to, though it doesn’t include any direct message capabilities. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, images and videos up to five minutes long, according to the Meta blog.
It’s available in more than 100 countries on both the Apple App Store (NASDAQ) and the Google Play Store (NASDAQ:) on the Play Store, the blog said.
Meta stock closed up 3% on Wednesday before the launch, eclipsing gains made by rival tech companies.
Twitter on the back foot
The arrival of the leads comes after Zuckerberg and Musk traded barbs for months, even threatening to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas.
Meta is targeting a time when Twitter is definitely on the defensive.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, but its value has plummeted since then amid massive staff cuts and content moderation disputes that have alienated both users and advertisers. Its latest move included limiting the number of tweets users could read per day.
Zuckerberg pointed out the challenges that large public social media forums bring. He wrote, “I think there should be a public conversations app with over 1 billion people. Twitter had the opportunity to do it but didn’t quite get it. Hopefully we will.”
Integration with Instagram included several nods to privacy considerations. Instagram users who subscribe to Topics automatically get a badge affixed to their Instagram profile, but they can choose to hide it. They are also given options to choose different privacy settings for each app.
Brands like Billboard, HBO, NPR, and Netflix (NASDAQ:) have accounts set up within minutes of launching. According to a Reuters review, the app did not appear to display any ads.
In order to generate threads, Meta has been doing initiatives with social media influencers to attract them to the new app and encourage them to post at least twice a day, said Ryan Dirt, CEO of influencer marketing firm Influential.
The app also benefits from the failure of other potential Twitter competitors to take advantage of the service’s faltering. While a number of burgeoning competitors like Mastodon, Post, Truth Social, and T2 have tried to lure Twitter users away, all of them are still relatively young so far.
Bluesky, a new service backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, launched its invite-only beta in February and users were initially asking for access tokens. Its website said it had 50,000 users as of April. Dorsey also supported another platform called Nostr.
However, Meta has suffered multiple failures launching standalone copycat apps in the past, most notably the Lasso app that aims to compete with short-form video competitor TikTok.
The company later integrated a short video tool, Reels, directly into Instagram and recently abolished its unit tasked with designing experimental apps.
Zuckerberg, responding to a user who predicted Twitter’s demise about an hour after the threads were released, cautioned against patience. “We’re just in the opening moments of the first round here,” he said.