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Threads is the latest Twitter clone in town, and from the biggest social company in the world, Meta.
Meta is yet to share official numbers for Threads but there have been reports on the number of user sign-ups ever since the app launch. According to internal data shared by Meta with The Verge's Alex Heath, Threads surpassed 48 million user sign-ups. Later, a Threads user Joe Scannell shared that the app has crossed 50 million users. These aren't official numbers but it won't be surprising if it were, and the count is expected to increase even more.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri did share a small update about how Threads is doing so far.
"Things have been hectic behind the scenes this week, most of the Threads team is focused on keeping the app up and fixing all the bugs we're finding. It feels a little bit like what working at this company felt like 10 years ago, everyone's rolling up their sleeves, hustling, and trying to help the best they can. We didn't expect 10s of millions of people to sign up in less than a day, but supporting that is the definition of a champagne problem," Mosseri posted in his Instagram channel.
Instagram incorporated a very smart and convenient way for people to join Threads. You login with your Instagram account, and you can import all the existing data including the people you follow, bio, and verified badge to Threads. So the app already has some familiarity even though it's new. It's also the closest that comes to Twitter in terms of popularity as compared to previous rivals. There's also a sly but cruel way of retaining the user base as you can only delete your Threads account by deleting your Instagram account as well. You can still deactivate it though.
Twitter is definitely feeling the heat from its new competitor, and it's even planning to sue Meta for Threads. According to a report by Semafor, Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Twitter, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In the letter, Twitter is accusing Meta of accessing the former's "trade secrets and other highly confidential information." It even alleges that Meta hired "dozens of Twitter employees" to deliberately use their Twitter knowledge to create this "copycat" app.
It's worth noting that after Musk took over Twitter, he fired a big lot of employees. Meta, however, denies having any former Twitter employee work on the Threads app, the report added. Musk has been vocal too replying to tweets about Threads, and in one he says, "Competition is fine, cheating is not."
Twitter does plan on taking legal action against Meta, so that should be interesting. But for now it looks like Meta is enjoying all the attention from its new Twitter-clone.