Within the first few hours of its launch, Threads, a rival to Twitter from Meta, had more than 10 million users sign up, according to Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO.
At 2300 GMT on Wednesday, the app became live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries. It will run without advertisements for the time being, although its debut in Europe has been postponed due to worries over data protection.
Zuckerberg wrote on his official Threads account Thursday, “10 million sign-ups in seven hours.”
The biggest threat to Elon Musk-owned Twitter so far is Threads, which has seen a number of prospective rivals emerge but hasn’t yet succeeded in dislodging one of the biggest social networking networks in the world.
Zuckerberg added that: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully, we will.”
Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and other well-known figures had accounts already set up, as did The Washington Post and The Economist.
Musk received a shot across the bow from Zuckerberg as the two are well-known to be fierce adversaries.
Instagram, which has a built-in audience of more than two billion users, offered an obvious spin-off in the form of Threads, saving the new platform the challenge of beginning from scratch.
- Tags: Hugh Jackman, Mark Zuckerberg, threads, threads CEO
