Owner of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, unveiled the brand-new social media platform designed to rival Twitter. In the space of a week, the Threads app has broken records with its high volume of early sign-ups. What impact is this having on the rest of the social media world?

Certain social media platforms have become staple apps on our smartphones. Can anyone even remember what we did before we could mindlessly scroll through strangers’ photos or engage in digital rows with faceless Twitter meme lords? Now, there’s a new kid on the block, and it’s already causing a bit of a splash.

From the creators of Facebook and Instagram, Threads is the new app from Meta that is pegged to rival Twitter. In its first week, Threads became easily the fastest-growing app ever, hitting 1000m users. To put that into perspective, Instagram took a week to reach 100,000 users back in 2010.

Threads App’s First Week Success

Mark Zuckerberg has said that Threads will “focus on kindness”, setting it apart from Elon Musk’s pet project Twitter.

Zuck took to his new app to share his excitement. “Threads reached 100 million sign-ups over the weekend,” wrote Zuckerberg. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. Can’t believe it’s only been five days!”

In order to sign up for Threads, users need to have an Instagram account. Users are then able to transfer the accounts they follow on Instagram over to Threads. It’s a bit like going from flicking through peoples’ photo albums, to then reading their diaries as well. What a treat.

Mike Proulx, the research director at the analysis firm Forrester, has stated that Threads is a case study on what to do right. He added that “the meteoric rise of Threads, in just five days, demonstrates just how many people have longed for an alternative to what Twitter has devolved into.”

How Does Elon Musk Feel About Threads App?

Of course, Elon Musk has greeted the explosion of the new Threads app with grace and thoughtfully considered comments, with good sportsmanship at the forefront of everything. Yeah… no.

Musk has called Threads a “copycat” app, and has suggested the two rivals have a “literal dick-measuring contest”. Musk, who did not found Twitter but instead bought it from original founder, Jack Dorsey, has thrown out some other interesting insults towards Zuckerberg. There have even been suggestions of an actual cage fight between the two grown men.

Twitter vs Threads | What’s Coming Next?

Threads has grown rapidly in a short space of time. The real test will be whether it can sustain this level of major growth, and have people use the app repeatedly. As yet, Threads has not launched in the EU due to concerns about how the app will handle personal data.

The launch of Threads has already, seemingly, begun to have an adverse impact on Twitter. Web services firm, Cloudflare, reported on Sunday that traffic to Twitter was “tanking”. The Cloudflare managing director, Matthew Prince, shared a graph demonstrating the drop in Cloudflare’s domain server ranking for Twitter in mid-2023.

This drop in traffic also coincides with Musk imposing tweet viewing limits on Twitter. It’s okay though, Twitter still has support from the senior Taliban leader, Anas Haqqani. Thank goodness. Haqqani has praised Twitter for its promotion of freedom of speech, as well as its “public nature & credibility”. He said that Threads has an “intolerant policy”.

This comes after some prevalent right-wing figures had signed up to Threads, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and outspoken antisemite. Since then, Meta has taken down Spencer’s account.

Will Twitter continue to fumble and stumble around, enabling a potentially slicker and more grounded Threads to swoop in and take over? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Whichever social media platform is your favourite, level up the content you share by adding some awesome royalty free music!

Sign up to Synchedin now, and start exploring a huge library of music that you can use in your video content with zero copyright hassle.