Threads app, a Twitter-like social media platform, has just reached the milestone of 100 million users. This data comes from Quiver Quantitative’s Threads Tracker, and the figure was reached just four days after the launch. This represents a new record for a social media platform in history.
The Threads app reached 10 million users in the first seven hours and more than 30 million by Thursday morning. Around 24 hours later, that figure had more than doubled.
What is more intriguing, the European Union, with its population of 450 million, is excluded from the statistics. Of course, for well-known reasons like privacy concerns, Meta decided not to launch Threads in the EU in the first place. This comes shortly after Google hadn’t launched its Bard AI tool for the same reason.
Threads app certainly had a flying start. It uses Instagram as a basis, but with a huge amount of newcomers, who had never used Instagram before. The second main reason for such rapid growth is apparently Elon Musk’s mistakes from last week. He closed Twitter to unregistered users, under the pretext of data scraping performed by AI companies.
Moreover, Musk also limited the daily activity for registered members. This caused the anger of users who apparently just couldn’t wait to switch to another platform.
Threads is not aimed to replace Twitter, CEO says
However, according to the first user experiences, Threads, as a Twitter clone, still lacks many basic functions. Especially those that old Twitter users are used to. For example, searching by username, which makes it much more difficult to find old acquaintances from Twitter. One of the major flaws is that you need to install the Threads app because it’s not possible to post from the web. Furthermore, there are no hashtags, an extremely important tool that Twitter users consider mandatory. The worst part is that there is no chronological feed. Only an algorithmic one.
Gizchina News of the week
As a result, Threads users are currently overwhelmed with posts by celebrities, influencer brands, etc. And we all know that this makes using social media extremely difficult. Also, Adam Mosseri, CEO of Threads, said that this social media is not intended for politics and news.
“Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads they have on Instagram as well to some extent. But we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote, noting that the aim of Threads isn’t to replace Twitter.
Threads app user experience
“Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise,” Mosseri pointed out. “But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them. There are more than enough amazing communities like sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc. to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.”
Now it seems that this is not really the case at the moment. It didn’t take too long before many companies and influencers take their positions. Anyway, he also announced that essential features that users currently lack will soon be arriving, including the chronological feed.
There is also a concern about losing your Instagram account if you delete the Threads app. According to the Threads team, this issue should be resolved, though.
It’s hard to tell if Threads will win this battle and become more popular than Twitter. If Elon Musk continues with his sand play, we won’t be surprised if it really happens after all. Also, if Meta meets the EU regulations, and at some point in time launches Threads for EU users, it will be an additional boost to the new platform.
