10M and counting; Meta’s Threads launches as competitor to Twitter

Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter, is live and has 10 million subscribers already, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

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It went live at 7 p.m. EDT Wednesday instead of as planned at 10 a.m. EDT Thursday, CBS News reported.

Zuckerberg expects the direct competitor to Elon Musk’s social media app to keep courting users, The Washington Post reported.

“It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads on Wednesday. “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.” He wrote the message in response to a user who asked “Anyone think this can become bigger than twitter!?”

Twitter claims to have more than 200 million daily users, according to CBS News.

Threads already has several high-profile users including Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the Post reported.

Ocasio-Cortez has criticized Twitter and Musk in the past and wrote on Threads, “May this platform have good vibes, strong community, excellent humor and less harassment.”

The Washington Post and The Economist have also started accounts, CBS News reported.

Threads, which is billed as an “Instagram app,” functions a lot like Twitter, using text — limited to 500 characters — to share thoughts. Users can tag each other using @ and can reply or “repost” a thread. There is no option to direct message someone in Threads.

The Associated Press reported that Threads gives users “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”

The platform also allows users to keep their Instagram username, follow some or all accounts they follow on Instagram and use a one-click log-in, the Post reported.

“It’s as simple as that: if an Instagram user with a large number of followers such as Kardashian or a Bieber or a Messi begins posting on Threads regularly, a new platform could quickly thrive,” Brian Wieser said, according to CBS News. Wieser is a strategic financial analyst.

Despite the potential popularity, some, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and current owner Musk, worry about the personal information that Threads may access. That information includes contacts, search history, contact information, financial information and purchases.

Twitter collects similar data.

One thing that Threads won’t have, at least for now, is advertising, according to CBS News.

And unlike Twitter, there is no chronological, following-only feed of threads. The platform’s algorithm decides what users see, Engadget reported. There is also no post editing, hashtags or desktop version of Threads. More development, however, is planned.

The launch of Threads comes after Musk made several changes in addition to limiting the number of tweets that can be read, including requiring users to be verified if they use TweetDeck to manage several accounts at the same time, the AP reported.

TweetDeck will be behind a paywall in about 30 days, BBC News reported.

Last year, an unidentified Meta employee wrote an internal post that read “Twitter is in crisis and Meta needs its mojo back,” adding, “LET’S GO FOR THEIR BREAD AND BUTTER,” the Times reported.

Threads is not the only app that takes inspiration from Twitter. There’s also Mastodon and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platforms, according to BBC News.