Meta’s Threads has surpassed 100 million sign-ups in just five days since its launch, making it the fastest-growing online platform to hit this milestone. The news was announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who revealed that the surge in sign-ups was largely driven by organic demand.
Threads, which is being seen as the first serious threat to Elon Musk’s microblogging app, has been breaking records for user growth since its launch. Celebrities, politicians, and other newsmakers have flocked to the platform, grabbing the attention of analysts who view Threads as a formidable rival to existing social media giants.
Zuckerberg shared the impressive feat in a Threads post, mentioning that the company has refrained from extensive promotions so far. This organic growth has outpaced the previous record-holder, OpenAI-owned ChatGPT, which took around two months to reach this milestone.
The launch of Threads has also had an impact on Twitter. According to web analytics companies, Twitter’s web traffic experienced an 11% drop from the previous year in the days following Threads’ launch. This compares to the 4% decline year-over-year in June. Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, shared a graph on Twitter demonstrating Twitter’s declining traffic and referred to it as tanking.
However, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that the platform had its largest usage day since February last week. While Twitter is still a dominant player in the social media landscape, Threads’ swift rise has undoubtedly caught its attention.
Meta’s new platform is not the first attempt to challenge Twitter, but it has gained significant traction where others have fallen short. Other emerging competitors such as Mastodon, Bluesky, Truth Social, and T2 have relatively small user bases in comparison. For example, Mastodon has about 7.7 million total users, but only a fraction of them actively use the service.
Although still in its early stages, Threads bears a strong resemblance to Twitter in terms of functionality. It allows posts up to 500 characters long and supports links, photos, and videos up to five minutes in length. However, it currently lacks features such as direct messaging, desktop support, hashtags, and keyword search functions.
Despite its limitations, analysts believe that the recent controversies surrounding Twitter, such as its imposed limits on tweet visibility, could work in Threads’ favor. The absence of ads on the Threads app also differentiates it from its competitors. Zuckerberg has indicated that the company will consider monetization options once the user base reaches one billion.
Meta’s Instagram head, Adam Mosseri, clarified that Threads is not intended to replace Twitter. Instead, it aims to focus on lighter subjects like sports, music, fashion, and design. However, political and hard news topics are bound to emerge on Threads, posing a challenge for its positioning as a friendlier option for online public discourse.
Meta’s share prices rose by 1.2% following the announcement, and they have experienced a gain of over 140% this year. As Meta expands its offering with Threads, it is poised to shake up the social media landscape in the coming months.
