PARIS: To discourage Twitter’s monopoly, the Threads app launched by Instagram as a rival to Twitter has signed up more than 100 million users in less than five days, data tracking websites said on Monday, smashing the record of AI (Artificial intelligence) tool ChatGPT for fastest-growing consumer app.
A couple of months back, after the dominating arrival of ChatGPTthat took two months to hit the 100 million user mark, surpassed by Meta Thread in fast usage. The video-sharing app TikTok took nine months, and Instagram itself took two and a half years to reach the 100 million mark after its 2010 launch.
Threads Aims to Counter Twitter
Threads went live on Apple and Android application stores in about 100 countries late on Wednesday; however, it is not available in Europe because Meta is unsure how to navigate the data privacy legislation of the European Union.
Twitter is said to have about 200 million regular users, but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Elon Musk bought the platform last year and sacked thousands of staff.
Elon Musk, who also serves as the boss of Tesla and SpaceX, has also alienated many users by introducing several charges for previously free services and allowing banned right-wing accounts back on the platform.
To counter Twitter’s dominancy, several other rivals have emerged, but most are niche platforms without the capacity to grow at the necessary scale to dethrone Twitter.
Threads is finding it easier because it is linked to Instagram, which has more than one billion proper users.
Online data service Quiver Quantitative reported that the app passed 100 million users at 0700 GMT on Monday.
Other websites using a count of the “badges” received by Instagram users who have downloaded Threads reckoned the mark had passed earlier.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Threads’ parent company Meta for stealing trade secrets and intellectual property, claims denied by the company, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp.
Musk is locked in a rivalry with Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, with the two men calling each other out for a cage fight recently.
