Threads surpasses 30 million users at launch – 7/6/2023 – Tech

At least 30 million people have registered on Threads, Meta’s new social network to rival Twitter, announced the group’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, this Thursday (6).

The application, which went live on Wednesday (5) at 8 pm (Brasília time) in 100 countries and currently works without advertising, is the biggest threat to date against Twitter, owned by Elon Musk and facing problems for several reasons.

“Let’s go. Welcome to Threads”, wrote Zuckerberg, in his account when launching the new platform.

“Wow, 30 million accounts” announced this Thursday shortly after 15:00 (12:00 GMT). “I would say that we are facing something exceptional, but we still have a lot of work to do to build the application”.

Earlier, he had challenged Musk: “It will take some time, but I believe there should be a platform for public conversations with more than 1 billion people. Twitter had the opportunity to do this, but it did not succeed. I hope we do it.”

In his first Twitter message in over a decade, Zuckerberg posted the Spider-Man meme pointing to another Spider-Man, in an apparent reference to the similarities between the two social networks.

In the App Store, the platform is described as “Instagram’s text-based social networking app”, a presentation that, added to images, looks similar to Twitter.

“We hope [a Threads] can be an open and welcoming platform for debate “, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri wrote. ′′ If that’s what you want too, the best thing is to be kind “.

“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics we care about today to what’s trending tomorrow,” reads the app’s description on these digital stores.

“We are thinking about an independent and decentralized social network to share text messages in real time,” the group said in a statement sent to AFP on Tuesday.

Usually very active on Twitter, Musk did not react to Threads’ launch.

An eventual setback for Twitter

Meta has not made a formal announcement about the launch of the platform, which takes place a few days after a new controversy related to Twitter.

On Saturday, the main shareholder of the bluebird network, Elon Musk, announced the imposition of a limit on the number of views accessible to users that did not go down well with twitterers, developers and advertisers.

The decision is part of a series of changes that the tycoon has implemented on the platform and which have been poorly received, such as the new rules for profiles verified by subscription and the dismissal of almost all staff dedicated to content moderation.

In addition, on Monday, Twitter announced that the TweetDeck extension, which is very popular with more frequent users and companies, would only be accessible through the subscription plan.

For now, Meta has chosen not to offer Threads to residents of the European Union, until the implications for the company and its products are clarified under the new Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), which came into effect in early May, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The DMA seeks to impose specific rules on key internet companies, particularly Meta, to prevent anti-competitive practices.

However, the group from Menlo Park (California) intends, in the long term, to launch Threads in the European Union, on a date yet to be defined, indicated a source close to the subject.

take-off platform

Meta does not hide its strategy for its recently launched application to grow quickly, since, from the first moment, it decided to present it as an arm of Instagram, which is “the most successful product of the Meta family”, says Pinar Yildirim , professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

“They couldn’t associate this new product with Facebook, because that name no longer appeals to anyone”.

With more than two billion active users, Instagram offers Threads a platform to take off that smaller Twitter competitors like Mastodon and Bluesky would dream of, or the networks favored by ultraconservatives like Truth Social, Speak, Gettr and Gab.

Thus, Threads allows Instagram users to authenticate directly if they already have a profile to publish content on the new platform.

“The equation is simple: if an Instagram user with a significant amount of followers like [Kim] kardashian, [Justin] Bieber or [Lionel] Messi starts posting regularly on Threads, the new platform can grow quickly and I believe advertising budgets will follow suit in the short term,” wrote Substack analyst Brian Wieser.

Some celebrities already appeared to have profiles on Threads at launch time, including singer Shakira, model Karlie Kloss and actor Jack Black.

This trend could be even more concerning for Twitter, as the San Francisco-based company has seen its advertising revenue evaporate since the arrival of Elon Musk.

Regarding the personal data of users collected by Threads, the description indicates that, among others, contacts and geolocation will be collected, which will be used for advertising purposes.

Threads a serious threat to Twitter, analysts say

Threads could quickly become a major threat to Twitter thanks to its easy access to billions of Instagram users, a rival-like interface and the social media giant’s advertising heft, analysts and industry experts told the agency. Reuters news.

“Meta’s launch of Threads came at the perfect time to give it a chance to beat Twitter,” said Niklas Myhr, a marketing professor at Chapman University, referring to the Twitter turmoil after the network capped the number of tweets that users can see.

“Threads will start fast as it’s built on top of the Instagram platform with its huge user base, and if users adopt Threads, advertisers will follow closely.”

There are currently no ads on the Threads app and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company will only think about monetization when there is a clear path to 1 billion users.

Existing Instagram and Facebook ad relationships should help Threads’ revenue, said Pinar Yildirim, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Facebook is a less uncertain bet compared to Twitter and a bigger player in the ad market.”

Although Threads is a standalone app, users can log in using their Instagram credentials, making it an easy addition to Instagram’s 2 billion+ monthly active users.

Twitter, by comparison, had 229 million monthly active users as of May 2022, according to a statement made prior to Musk’s purchase of the social media platform.

With Reuters