Meta’s Threads, a Twitter rival, surpassed 100 million users in just five days, making it the fastest-growing online platform to reach this milestone. This is even faster than the growth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which took two months to reach 100 million monthly users.
Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg has released a number of updates throughout those days, saying that Meta Threads achievement was “way beyond our expectations” – it hit two million in two hours, and ten million in seven hours, he had said.
Meta’s Threads user milestone
Meta Threads users’ record was reached pretty fast. The microblogging platform’s user base is setting new records since its launch on Wednesday, with celebrities, politicians and other newsmakers joining the platform.
Meta Threads’ popularity is seen by analysts as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned microblogging app.
Its popularity could be judged what with celebrities from Jennifer Lopez to Kim Kardashian joining the platform seen as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned Twitter. Twitter has responded by threatening to sue Meta over the app, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information.
“That’s mostly organic demand, and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” Zuckerberg said in a post announcing Meta’s Threads user milestone.
Meta Threads’ 100 million users sprint was much speedier than that of OpenAI-owned ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in January about two months after its launch, according to a UBS study.
Threads popularity casing turmoil for twitter.
Meta’s Instagram Threads app has been gaining popularity at an alarming rate, causing turmoil mostly for Twitter.
Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users as of July last year, according to the company’s last public disclosure before Musk’s takeover, although data from web analytics companies indicates usage has dropped since then.
Twitter’s web traffic was down 11% from the year prior in the days after the Threads launch, compared to the 4% it was down year-over-year as of June, according to Similarweb.
Matthew Prince, CEO of internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, shared a graph in a tweet on Sunday and said Twitter’s traffic was “tanking.”
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted on Monday that the platform last week had its “largest usage day” since February, without providing details. “There’s only ONE Twitter,” she tweeted.
Meta Threads’ users record is a great achievement for its CEO, Zuckerberg. The platform’s 100 million users in such a short time, definitely directs towards its success amongst the competition in the market. Threads is not the first attempt to challenge Twitter, other burgeoning competitors such as Mastodon, Bluesky, Truth Social and T2 all remain relatively small at this point.
The new social app’s popularity does not impress Musk. Musk has responded to Threads’ arrival by mocking it and threatening to sue Meta, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information to build the app.
That claim, legal experts say, could be hard to prove.
Missing from Meta Threads?
Meta Threads achievement cannot be undermined, though Threads like other would-be rivals, bears a strong resemblance to Twitter. It allows posts that are up to 500 characters long and supports links, photos and videos of up to 5 minutes.
The app also does not yet have a direct messaging function and lacks a desktop version that certain users, such as business organizations, rely on.
It also currently lacks hashtags and keyword search functions, which limits its appeal to advertisers and its utility as a place for following real-time events like users frequently do on Twitter.
Still, analysts said the turmoil at Twitter, including an uproar over recently imposed limits on the number on tweets users can see, could increase Meta Instagram Threads user base.
Threads currently has no ads and as per Zuckerberg would only think about monetization once there was a clear path to 1 billion users.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said last week Meta was not trying to replace Twitter and that Threads aimed to focus on light subjects like sports, music, fashion and design.
Meta stock
Meta shares closed up 1.2% on Monday and have gained more than 140% so far this year.
