The new social network, launched by the US giant Meta Group, to compete with Twitter, continues its strong launch, with more than ten million subscribers joining it within a few hours, while its service in Europe was postponed for procedural reasons.
The service was launched, on Wednesday, at 23:00 GMT in a hundred countries, and it works without ads and constitutes the biggest challenge for Twitter, which is mired in a series of problems.
“Let’s get started now. Welcome to Threads,” Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the new app, and in a few minutes he had thousands of likes.
“Ten million people sign up in seven hours,” Zuckerberg said Thursday morning.
And before that, he responded through his account to several users.For the first time in more than ten years, he sent a message via Twitter featuring the character “Spider-Man”.
Threads now includes the active accounts of celebrities such as Shakira, Jennifer Lopez and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets such as The Washington Post, Reuters and The Economist, and platforms such as The Hollywood Reporter, Vice and Netflix.
Threads is the biggest challenge for Twitter and its owner, Elon Musk, who has so far succeeded in repelling any potential competitor from similar applications and sites that have emerged such as “Blue Sky” and “Mastodon”.
“I hope Threads will be an open platform that welcomes everyone to have discussions,” said Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram.
A source close to the company said that regulatory concerns would delay the launch of the app in European Union countries, where Meta is subject to the new Digital Markets Act, which imposes strict rules on major internet companies.
One of these regulations prohibits the sharing of personal data across various platforms, such as between Instagram and Threads. Mark Zuckerberg previously faced scrutiny from European regulatory agencies for engaging in such practices when he acquired WhatsApp.
Mosseri regretted delaying the launch of “Threads” in Europe, explaining that Mita would have delayed the launch of the service for several months, pending the approval of the European Commission.
It is clear that Zuckerberg is taking advantage of Twitter’s floundering to launch this competing product, which Meta hopes will become the preferred communication channel for celebrities, corporations and politicians.
The launch of the service came only four months after information about this project was leaked, and a few days after a new Twitter flop that weakened this service even more.
This decision came after other unwelcome measures since the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter, especially the conversion of account confirmation to a paid service or the dismissal of the majority of employees in the field of content control.
The owner of Twitter announced, on Saturday, the imposition of a cap on the number of messages that can be viewed per day in each account, officially on a temporary basis, a measure that was not well received by users, advertisers, and developers as well.
Twitter said Monday that the “TweetDeck” service will only be available to verified and paid accounts.
“The timing is very good for Meta,” said Jonathan Taplin, author of two books on giant technology companies, stressing that “Threads” poses an existential threat to Twitter.
Launch pad
Meta does not hide its intention to rely on other products of its own, so that its latest applications will record rapid growth, stressing from the outset that Threads is derived from “Instagram”.
Pinar Yildirim, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out that Instagram “is a product of Meta that is achieving the greatest success. They were not able to link this new product with Facebook because this name is no longer pushing the dream.”
With more than two billion active users, Instagram provides the new service with a launching pad that was not available to other Twitter competitors such as “Blue Sky” or “Mastodon”, through to very conservative favorites such as “Truth Social”, “Parler”, “Gitter” and “Gap”. .
And “Threads” allows Instagram users to confirm login through the passwords they use, to publish content on the new platform.
Analyst Brian Visser wrote, “The equation is simple. If the oldest Instagram user with a large number of followers, such as Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Lionel Messi, publishes content on Threads regularly, this new platform may develop rapidly, and I suspect that advertising budgets will follow in a short period.”
This possibility could add pressure on Twitter, which has seen its ad revenue decline since Musk bought it.
