Mark Zuckerberg must be ecstatic that 100 million people signed up for Threads less than five days after the launch of Meta's new social network. Even though it's not available everywhere. Could this be the start of a success story, and above all a real alternative to Twitter?
Threads has passed the 100 million user mark. Journalist Tom Warren of The Verge published a post with a screenshot showing a badge numbered 100,054,051. This badge is visible on the Instagram profiles of people who have created a Threads account. It's supposed to be temporary, encouraging people to join the new social network. However, it also serves, indirectly, to estimate the number of people on Threads.
With his screenshot, Tom Warren can see that over 100 million people have joined Threads.
Threads is born. Several months after strong rumors about Meta's Twitter competitor, Threads is available, although not everywhere. For the time being, however, there is a method of accessing Threads. In just a few hours, ten million people have signed up for Threads, according to the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Significant success in just a few hours: a success story for Threads
For several days, the suspense had been there: Threads was present on the App Store and Google Play Store, but it was impossible to download the application. Later, a countdown timer was set up. It seems, however, that Meta was too impatient to wait, and finally opened the doors shortly before.
On July 1, 2023, Threads officially launched. Within two hours, there were two million registrations. Two hours later, there were five. Finally, seven hours after the launch of Threads, the milestone of ten million users was passed, said the CEO on his profile. As a certain Mark Zuckerberg said on Twitter one day in March 2009, it's "a good day."
Is Threads well on the way to competing with Twitter?
Ten million users - how does that compare with Twitter? According to January 2023 figures, Twitter has 368 million monthly active users. If we cross-produce this figure, we can see that Threads represents (already?) 2.7% of Twitter in terms of active users. All in just a few hours.
But what's also important in Threads' initial success is the identity of its first users. The social network seems to be succeeding in convincing brands, stars and influencers to get on board. There are already popular brands like Netflix, PlayStation and Xbox, and stars like Gordon Ramsey, Jack Black and Ellie Goulding. The latter were even given early registration by the Meta teams to ensure the launch. We can imagine that Threads won't hesitate to tap into Instagram's 2 billion monthly active users as a pool of new customers. The latter already integrates mentions of Threads into its notification system.
Other alternatives to Twitter have tried to emerge: Mastodon, Substack and, more recently, Bluesky. So far, none of them has achieved lasting success, let alone popular success. Where Threads could succeed is with Meta and Instagram. Lots of money, lots of human and material resources: all the conditions seem to be in place to make Threads a success. All this while "surfing" on the waves of criticism facing Twitter.
What Threads needs to do to thrive
There are still hurdles to overcome for Threads: for the moment, the application is relatively outdated. Few features, no hashtags, no private messages, limited search, etc. Moreover, as mentioned above, the application is not available in France or the rest of the European Union: Meta is potentially depriving itself of tens of millions of users for the time being. Fortunately, there are ways of getting around the geographical restrictions, but even the most inexperienced users may not take the plunge.
There's also the question of economics, which will undeniably come into play. For the time being, Threads is ad-free, but this is likely to be short-lived. Meta will still have to convince advertisers to abandon Twitter for Threads.
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