by Kevin Coupe
From The Verge:
"Instagram’s new Threads app has already surpassed 100 million users, meaning it reached the milestone dramatically faster than even ChatGPT. OpenAI’s chatbot passed the mark after two months, but Threads, which only launched on Wednesday, got there in a matter of days. The number of users can be found in the Instagram app, which tracks the size of the Threads userbase.
"Threads proved to be an early hit almost immediately. In the first two hours, it hit 2 million users and steadily climbed from there to 5 million, 10 million, 30 million, and then 70 million. The launch has been 'way beyond our expectations,' CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.
"Users aren’t just signing up: they’re posting, too … there have already been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app."
It is early, so it is hard to know where this new Twitter competitor is headed. We know that Twitter owner Elon Musk seems to be foaming at the mouth at this new competitor's success - he's threatened a lawsuit charging that former Twitter employees are inappropriately sharing proprietary information with the new social media site. (Threads lawyers have responded by saying that there are no former Twitter staffers working on the new site.)
Best I can tell, Threads does seem to replicate some of Twitter's functionality, so the high traffic levels may reflect the degree to which a lot of folks are tired of Musk's fulminating, posturing, and mis-informationing. I know I am. And the hunger for an alternative - specially one that easily integrates with sister platform Instagram - certainly is an Eye-Opener.
