Tens of tens of millions of individuals have rapidly signed as much as Meta’s new app, Threads, because it goals to compete with Twitter — an indication that customers are searching for a substitute for the social media platform that has undergone a sequence of unpopular modifications since Elon Musk purchased it.
Meta Platforms’ CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned Thursday that 30 million folks had registered for the app, together with 10 million within the first seven hours of its launch Wednesday within the U.S. and over 100 different international locations, together with Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan.
Threads is billed as a textual content-primarily based model of Meta’s photograph-sharing app Instagram that the corporate says gives “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
Instagram customers can log in with their current usernames and observe the identical accounts on the brand new app, giving Threads customers a prepared-made viewers and an edge over different Twitter challengers like Bluesky and Mastodon.
“I think I’ll just see — I’ll keep Twitter for a while and then if everyone moves over there (to Threads), then I’ll probably move,” said Javi de Andreas, a 24-year-old researcher in London.
He added that Instagram “feels like a bit more reliable just in terms of nothing really changes.”
There was plenty of excitement among Threads users about the opportunity to make a fresh start on a new social media app, giving Threads a “first day of school” vibe.
Early adopters included celebrities like chef Gordon Ramsay, pop star Shakira and actor Jack Black as well as Airbnb, Guinness World Records, Netflix, Vogue magazine and other media outlets.
There were also glitches, annoyance about the lack of a chronological feed and gripes about missing features — raising the question of whether the initial burst of interest would lead to sustained growth that could pose a meaningful challenge to Twitter.
“The euphoria around a new service and this initial explosion will probably settle down,” said Paolo Pescatore, a technology analyst at PP Foresight. “But it is apparent that this alternative is here to stay and will prove to be a worthy rival given all of Twitter’s woes.”
Teething issues for Threads embody Zuckerberg’s posts — or Threads as they’re dubbed — not loading in a number of international locations. But his replies to different customers did seem.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri acknowledged the early points.
“The real test is not if we can build up a lot of hype, but if you all find enough value in the app to keep using it ove time,” Mosseri posted in a thread.
“And there are tons of basics that are missing: search, hashtags, a following feed” and direct messaging, he mentioned. “We’re on it,” however ”it’ll take time.”
Threads does have buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a thread, and users see the number of likes and replies a post has received. Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter’s 280-character threshold for most users, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.
Some questioned whether it made sense to seek to combine Twitter and Instagram users, which are two distinct online groups. Twitter is tailored for quick and short updates, while Instagram is best for visually creative posts.
“Some people will want to keep it separate from Instagram for numerous and very good reasons,” Pescatore said. “This is something that Meta might have to address, which could halt its progress.”
Meta’s new offering also has raised data privacy concerns. The company has held off on rolling it out in the European Union, citing regulatory uncertainty.
The 27-nation EU has strict data privacy rules and is set to start enforcing a new set of digital rules aimed at clamping down on Big Tech companies and limiting what they can do with users’ personal information.
Threads could collect a wide range of personal information, including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive info,” according to its data privacy disclosure on the App Store.
Threads poses a fresh headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion. Analysts said combining Twitter-style features with Instagram’s look and feel would drive user engagement.
Musk has made a series of changes that have triggered backlash, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view to try to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – Associated Press)
