Threads makes waves, surpasses 100 million user milestone in just five days

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? Facebook parent company Meta introduced its Twitter competitor Threads less than a week ago. To say the launch has been a success would be the understatement of the century as the service has already attracted 100 million users in just five days.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri confirmed the milestone on Threads earlier today, and seemed just as surprised as everyone else by the service's success out of the gate.

"They say "make it work, make it great, make it grow." Well, we certainly did things out of order, but I promise we will make this thing great," Mosseri added.

Threads' launch has been nothing short of impressive. The service attracted two million signups in the first two hours, and blew past 10 million signups in seven hours. By the following morning, Threads already had 30 million registered users. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said the service hit 100 million signups over the weekend, adding that it was mostly organic demand. "We haven't even turned on many promotions yet," he added.

Related reading: Twitter threatens Meta with lawsuit over "misappropriated" trade secrets

The success of Threads should not come as that big of a surprise, especially given the current state of social media. Twitter is a mess right now following Elon Musk's purchase, but it is an established platform with years of operational time on its side. Threads is brand new although given Zuckerberg's social media expertise, it's a bit of a moot point.

The real challenge for Threads will be keeping users engaged on its platform. Google had a ton of success with Google+ in its early days, but ultimately failed to capitalize on it. Following a series of data breaches and no clear vision for the service, the search giant shut down Google+ in April 2019.

Both Zuckerberg and Mosseri acknowledged there is still a lot of work to do. Threads launched without support for several core features including direct messages, hashtags, and post searching. The service also has strict guidelines against nudity.

What are your thoughts on Threads? Does it have a shot at long-term sustainability, or will the hype die down once Twitter settles down?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/99340-threads-makes-waves-surpasses-100-million-user-milestone.html

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

The data harvesting olympics are heating up.

 

[polvooo]

The data harvesting olympics are heating up.

Gold medal goes to Zuck and everyone else just gets pilfered

 

[punctualturn]

By the heavy censorship that already exist in IG (my account was banned because I made a comment for one movie character to strangle another).

Their bots removed my comment and banned my account.

I appealed and someone finally realized the stupidity of the ban and reinstated.

But after that, I refuse to write anything and only use it for updates, so I wonder how many of those people that joined are still there.

 

[someOtherGuy]

What does Threads brings to the game that others, like Mastodon or TruthSocial (and many others), didn't? Not sure why we need "another" Twitter version, even worse than Twitter. At this point, Threads is "technically Twitter from some years ago, and politically Twitter before Musk", I understand that some people will be happy with that proposition but not sure how many will be in that train. A lot of "users" are "trials" (people trying it out) which seems another way in which Threads is copying the worst of Twitter: number cooking, "we have millions of subscribers, since they tried the service once and don't know exactly how to get out (and won't invest the time to find out how to deactivate the Threads account and be sure that they won't deactivate Instagram altogether), so we get to count them as "active".

 

[p51d007]

The data harvesting olympics are heating up.

So are the bots!

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Fatal attraction? Like any other company their TOS will change over time which some will not like. It's always about the numbers.

 

[Freddie159]

The key is not how many sign up the key is a month from now how many of those accounts remain active

 

[DonquixoteIII]

The stupidity of mankind never ceases to amaze....

 

[JamesBlond]

It will fail because its censoring free speech

 

[toooooot]

What does Threads brings to the game that others, like Mastodon or TruthSocial (and many others), didn't? Not sure why we need "another" Twitter version, even worse than Twitter. At this point, Threads is "technically Twitter from some years ago, and politically Twitter before Musk", I understand that some people will be happy with that proposition but not sure how many will be in that train. A lot of "users" are "trials" (people trying it out) which seems another way in which Threads is copying the worst of Twitter: number cooking, "we have millions of subscribers, since they tried the service once and don't know exactly how to get out (and won't invest the time to find out how to deactivate the Threads account and be sure that they won't deactivate Instagram altogether), so we get to count them as "active".

They bring more censorship. Therefore, millions of people who hate to hear what other people say will love it.

 

[Kashim]

It will fail because its censoring free speech

Ah yes, back to the lowest common denominator: free speech. It's so easy to throw around that phrase without any context at all. What is "free speech" to you exactly? Is hate speech free speech? Racism, bigotry, anti-semitism, sexism, etc. do all those fall under free speech? Should there be no censorship of any kind on any social media platform no matter how vile or offensive someone gets? Is that what you mean by free speech?

I got news for you, every single platform on the internet has some level of censorship despite what they might claim. Even Truth Social will ban you if you start attacking the site itself (says so in their ToS) or the orange turd that owns the site. So this idea that something will fail simply because YOU feel it's censoring free speech is ridiculous.

 

[Hotlynx16]

So many sheeple, so little time!Sad!

 

[someOtherGuy]

Ah yes, back to the lowest common denominator: free speech. It's so easy to throw around that phrase without any context at all. What is "free speech" to you exactly?

It means that no one can control what you can say. It becomes legal to be an *ss and to be unpolite and to trash talk and to lie and all the rest. Once you start "limiting" what can be "said" that's not free speech. Not sure why people have issue with words, they're so easy to ignore. Actions in the other hand are a completely different beast, though, but words are as strong as the person uttering them. You could abuse your "status" with unwise or untruthful words, but in the process you'd burn that hard to get trust.

Regarding the "social platforms", not sure who's claiming to be an anarchist social, everyone runs with their rules. The main problem with "censorship" is that is done in the shadows, based out of some very vague "community guidelines".

Do you want to have a communist social that doesn't allow those capitalist pigs? Fell free to do so, but please advertise so in the front page and explain in your ToS; after that there's no reason to complaint by anyone about censorship there, you should know what you're getting into.

In the other hand, if you advertise as a "place for videos on the Internet" and then start acting as a doctor, an election specialist, a political analyst, and the source of all the truth in the world, then people starts complaining with good reason.