Threads becomes the fastest downloaded app, raising Twitter’s anger
Two hours after hitting the start button on Wednesday on Threads, Instagram’s new app for real-time, public conversations, Mark Zuckerberg Posted that over two million people had downloaded his latest creation.
That was just the beginning.
Again two hours later, five million people had downloaded Threads. By the time Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, went to bed on Wednesday night, the number of downloads had risen to 10 million. When he woke up Thursday morning, the app had been downloaded more than 30 million times, he said.
In less than a day, Threads – which is meant to rival Twitter – seems to have taken the crown as the fastest downloaded app ever. According to OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, it easily surpassed ChatGPT, the chatbot, which was downloaded a million times in its first five days. And it is on track to surpass ChatGPT’s 100 million users within two months, which was the fastest ever to reach that number, according to the analytics company Compareweb.
Some of Twitter’s most-followed users — such as Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Gates, Shakira, and Oprah Winfrey — immediately joined Threads and started posting. The atmosphere was celebratory, with users writing welcome messages and expressing eagerness to read each other’s posts. At one point, the new app became so overrun with users that it seemed unstable.
“This is as good a start as we could have hoped for!” Mr. Zuckerberg, whose company owns Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp, said in a post on Threads Thursday. He later added, “It feels like the start of something special.”
The early momentum underlined people’s desire to find an alternative to Twitter, the 18-year-old digital town square that has long been the central place for online public conversation. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, the billionaire has made changes that have angered the social platform’s longtime users, especially those who don’t care about his laissez-faire approach to content moderation. Twitter is also experiencing more outages and bugs.
Mr. Musk is not taking Mr. Zuckerberg’s actions lightly. On Thursday, lawyers for Twitter sent Meta a letter threatening legal action, accusing the company of using trade secrets to build Threads, and asking the social network to preserve internal documents relevant to a dispute between the two companies. The letter was previously reported by Semafor. A Meta spokeswoman declined to comment.
Threads was a surprise hit for Meta, which was in desperate need of a win after coming under scrutiny for spreading misinformation and other toxic content on the internet. While Mr. Zuckerberg’s social network was lauded in its early days, in recent years it has been criticized by regulators, activists and users who have expressed anger at the company’s handling of data and its products. Meta has also faced questions about its move into the still-emerging immersive digital world of the so-called metaverse.
But this week was a reprieve—briefly, at least—for Mr. Zuckerberg and company. Inside Meta on Wednesday night, employees rejoiced at the launch of Threads, sharing inside jokes and memes with each other, according to screenshots of the conversations viewed by The New York Times.
Celebrities, brands and influencers were given early access to the app in recent days, a move by Meta to spark a free culture of fun and discussion. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said in an interview Wednesday that he wanted Threads to be a “friendly place” for public conversation.
“Can’t get enough of your threads,” actress Jennifer Lopez said in a Threads post, adding a music note emoji. Ms. DeGeneres wrote in her first Threads post, “Welcome to Gay Twitter!”
Still, such early momentum doesn’t necessarily translate into long-term commitment and success. Twitter had more than 250 million daily users, according to the latest public figures cited by the company last year. And some Threads users have been put off by an issue where users may have to delete their connected Instagram account if they want to delete their Threads account. Instagram said it was looking at alternative ways for Threads users to deactivate their accounts.
This is a developing story and will be updated.