Meta’s new social media platform Threads has taken off like wildfire, with upwards of 100 million users joining within just five days of its launch.
Designed to compete with rival Twitter, the app attracted on average one million users to the platform every four hours; making it the world’s most downloaded at the time.
“That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
The app’s explosive growth has given rise to questions about where this tectonic shift in the digital landscape could lead, particularly around data privacy and an algorithm-driven feed designed to promote engagement.
The early numbers look good for Meta, however Threads has a long way to go before it catches up to the 2.9 billion monthly users on Facebook, 2.3 billion Instagram users and the approximately 400 million people its direct competitor Twitter logs each month.
One feature which helped attract early adopters was how easily people can create a Threads account from their existing social media.
Users have the choice to follow everyone they know on Instagram when they sign up for the first time.
This means new accounts are already able to interact with friends and followers.
But there could be some major downsides to the platform.
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Threads collect a lot of data from its users, including location, purchase history, health information, and advertiser information.
The app has many features that appear to mimic Twitter, which may already have opened the platform up to costly legal action.
It does away with the real-time feed that helped Twitter to flourish as posts will not be chronologically ordered.
Threads will not prioritise political or “hard news” over any other content, instead promoting sports, music, fashion, beauty, and entertainment to bolster engagement.
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said focusing on news would invite a level of “scrutiny, negativity, and integrity risk” not worth the revenue it would bring.
Threads’ massive growth could be a sign that people are looking for Twitter alternatives.
While Threads has been seeing astronomical increases, multiple internet traffic analysts reported noticeable declines in Twitter usage in just the past few days.
“We’ve been reporting for a while that Twitter is down compared with last year – June traffic was down 4 per cent – but Threads seems to be taking a bigger bite out of it,” David Carr, a spokesman for internet analysts Similarweb said.
Last week, Australian authorities issued a legal notice to Twitter demanding the social media giant explain how it is tackling online hate, with the threat of fines looming.
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