The actual bout between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is still in the future — if it happens at all. But in a battle between their respective social media platforms, Meta’s new Threads is, as they say, coming out swinging. And in this case, the the method of choice of that metaphorical battle is user adoption — and Threads is seeing a significant amount of users downloading it since it first appeared in the Apple and Android web stores.
As Smithsonian Magazine reports, the app has set a new record for the speed at which users have downloaded it, with Mark Zuckerberg providing an update on Friday that 70 million accounts had signed up for the platform. “Way beyond our expectations,” the Meta CEO said. As Smithsonian notes, this is a fraction of Twitter’s total number of users, but it remains notable both for the sheer quantity of people signing up and for the speed at which they’ve done so.
That isn’t the only notable achievement the new social media service reached. It also took it just seven hours to accumulate 10 million users, and became the fastest app to reach a million users. Momentum certainly seems to be on Threads’ side — and the ease of using one’s Instagram login to create a Threads profile gives it a few advantages some other alternatives to Twitter don’t have.
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New details have leaked on P92/Barcelona, IG’s new text-based appTwitter’s reaction to Threads has, to date, involved threats of legal actions. As The Hollywood Reporter stated, a cease-and-desist letter sent from Twitter to Meta argues that the latter used trade secrets from the former in creating Threads. It’s one of several high-profile legal efforts Twitter seems to be engaging in — both related to the rise of Threads and to Musk’s initial acquisition of Twitter. It feels like things are accelerating — but as for where it’ll end up, that remains unclear.
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