Threads, the latest social media offering by Meta, has surged past 100 million users. The app reached that milestone dramatically faster than even ChatGPT.
ChatGPT, the popular chatbot by OpenAI, passed the mark in two months, but Threads, which only launched on Thursday, got there in about four days. Video-sharing app TikTok took nine months, and Instagram took two and a half years to reach the same mark in 2010.
Online data service Quiver Quantitative reported that Threads passed 100 million users at 07:00 GMT on Monday.
– “Beyond expectations”
Threads reached 30 million in the first seven hours of launch as many users, frustrated by the increasingly erratic policies at Twitter, sought an alternative.
The launch has been “way beyond our expectations,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.
Tech site The Verge reported on Monday that users were not just signing up but are also posting, with more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes by Friday.
– Learn more
The text-based Threads is linked closely to Instagram. Users are allowed to confirm their new accounts using their existing Instagram credentials. Non-Instagram users can also customise Threads profiles independently.
The app allows users to follow the same accounts they do on Instagram. Users can post short text updates of up to 500 characters, links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length.
Threads’s high promise of being able to displace Twitter, where competitors Bluesky, Mastadon and Truth Social failed, is its being connected to Instagram and the 2 billion users already on that platform.
But the tie to Instagram poses a big challenge for users. Users lose their Instagram account if they deactivate Threads.
Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri said the new platform isn’t specifically targeting trying to replace Twitter and the company isn’t going to actively encourage politics and hard news on the platform, but it could end up being the place people go for a conversation-based social media platform.
Discover more from Pluboard
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.