Instagram's Twitter rival, Threads, already has more than 30 million users despite only being available for a matter of days, according to Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Threads launched earlier today and allows users to post short messages of up to 500 characters. Threads is an attempt to capitalize on Twitter's turmoil following the acquisition by Elon Musk last year, and it looks like users are already on board.
Zuckerberg says the key to the platform's success will be its friendliness. In a reply on the Threads app asking if "Anyone think this can become bigger than Twitter!?" Zuckerberg replied, "It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will."
Threads is now available in over 100 countries, including the U.S and the U.K, but anyone in Europe will have to wait because of regulatory concerns to do with the data being used by the app, which according to the App Store may include health, financial, and browsing data linked to users' identities.
The start of an endless thread
Meta says that the current version of Threads is an "initial version," and the company says, "Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text,"
Despite over 10 million sign-ups thanks to the easy integration with Instagram, there have been minor issues, particularly for those running iOS 17 developer beta. Obviously, anyone that uses a beta expects crashing, but currently, some users are unable to create a thread with images or manually select who they want to follow during sign-up.
These issues should be ironed out fairly quickly, either with an update to the Threads app or with the launch of iOS 17 Public Beta later this month. As it stands, Threads is on the right path to becoming one of the best apps on iPhone.
