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Update : Zuckerberg said Threads reached 10 million signups in seven hours. Four hours after Meta released Threads, 5 million people signed up. The headline now reflects the milestone.
Threads, Meta’s Twitter clone, is attracting users on day one.
Threads reached 2 million signups in its first two hours on the App Store and is still growing. Mark Zuckerberg announced the milestone on Threads.
After a flashy Instagram cross-promotion, iOS users could “preorder” Threads. Instagram accounts now show Threads user numbers, making counting transparent and real-time.
Threads pre-launchers received a push notification on Wednesday afternoon and could immediately use Meta’s latest app.
With Twitter on life support and its owner imposing rate limits over the weekend, demand for a replacement is high. Mastodon and Bluesky have had their moments, but both have their drawbacks. Mastodon has a scary sign-up process and fediverse uncertainty. Early shitposts have given way to concerns that Bluesky will repeat its forebear’s moderation mistakes—and those of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who cheered Elon Musk’s takeover and now sits on Bluesky’s board.
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg tweeted for the first time in over a decade to celebrate the Twitter knockoff, which is likely to attract a lot of engagement as Twitter struggles and other potential successor apps fail to consolidate its users.
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
Signing up users for a new app is easier than keeping them. Meta’s decision to forgo a chronological feed with Threads—or even a feed for users you follow—means the company is counting on the same algorithmic mix to get users hooked and keep them there. Threads should have started with Twitter’s best feature: a clean timeline without algorithmic junk. That’s a big caveat for Twitter knockoffs these days.
Threads is young. The team has promised fediverse-friendly integration that goes against Meta’s walled-garden-stuffed-with-ads ethos, but whether Threads will give users more content choice is unknown.
