ALBAWABA – More than 10.3 million people have signed up to the Threads app less than 12 hours since the official launch of the new social media platform on Thursday, which was created by Facebook and Instagram parent Company Meta to rival Elon Musk’s Twitter.
"10 million sign ups in seven hours," said CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads. New accounts had exceeded 10.3 million by 11:11 a.m. Amman time.
With Twitter already on the ropes, Zuckerberg ramped up the tech billionaires' rivalry with the launch of Instagram's much-anticipated companion app, Threads.
"Let's do this. Welcome to Threads," Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, along with a fire emoji.
Like Twitter, the app features short text posts that users can like, re-post and reply to, although it does not provide any direct message options.
Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long, according to a Meta blog post.
It is available in more than 100 countries on both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store, the blog post said.
Threads launched as a standalone app. But users can log in using their Instagram usernames and passwords and follow the same accounts.
This has the potential to accelerate the spread of Threads, as it becomes an easy, integrated addition to existing habits for Instagram's more than 2 billion monthly active users.
"Investors can't help but be a little excited about the prospect that Meta really has a 'Twitter-Killer'," Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at investment firm AJ Bell, told Reuters.
Meta stock edged up 3% on Wednesday ahead of the launch, outpacing gains by competitors as the broader market declined.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October. But the Threads-rival platform’s value has since plummeted over an exodus of advertisers, coupled with deep staffing cuts and content moderation controversies.
Its latest move involved limiting the number of tweets users can read per day.
Zuckerberg, on Threads, highlighted those challenges.
"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," he wrote.
