Meta’s answer to Twitter picked up 10m users in its first 10 hours
With continued confusion at Twitter amidst new-and-then-hastily-amended view limits from Elon Musk, there remains a subset of users keen to find an alternative social network. Mastodon has emerged as a contender to be “the new Twitter,” as has the invite-only Bluesky, although neither have yet garnered widespread popularity. Meanwhile, Meta has been quietly developing its own Twitter rival, and it’s out now, already picking up many millions of users.
Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, and as such is no stranger to running huge social networks. The company is seemingly looking to capitalize on Twitter’s recent bad press to launch an alternative micro-blogging service. Threads is essentially Instagram without images, allowing users to post short snippets of text and follow other users. You know, like Twitter.
One huge benefit the network has at launch is that Instagram users – of which there are around a billion – are able to instantly follow all the same people they already follow. Meta is even marketing Threads as “an Instagram app” to give it a leg up.
Building off an existing user base makes things familiar and seamless, but it remains to be seen whether enough people will be keen to move to a service run by a data-harvesting tech giant like Meta. We could see Twitter’s user base fracture further over the course of 2023: a large contingent who are happy to stay, a chunk excited to try Threads, and a smaller subset who favor a decentralized alternative.
Threads is available now, but considering how quickly it reached 10 million users, you’re already too late to be an early adopter. Still, you can join the app free using the link below.