Mark Zuckerberg’s all-new Threads social media platform sets to upset Elon Musk’s Twitter as it clocks 10m users hours after launch

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Pix above (L-R): Mark Zuckerberg of Threads and Elon Musk of Twitter

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Mark Zuckerberg’s all-new Threads social media platform might be a great threat to Elon Musk’s Twitter as it garnered more than 10 million users within the first few hours of its launch.

Zuckerberg, Meta CEO (parent company of Thread), made this known on Thursday, July 6, 2023.

The app which was intended to rival Twitter, went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 2300 GMT on Wednesday

It offers a text-based version of the photo-sharing app Instagram designed for “real-time updates and public conversations”.

“Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, accompanied with a fire emoji.

Accounts were already active for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets, including The Washington Post and The Economist.

Zuckerberg also offered a shot across the bow at Musk – the pair are known to be bitter rivals, and have offered to wrestle it out in a cage fight.

In his first tweet in over a decade, Zuckerberg posted a Spiderman pointing at Spiderman meme in an apparent reference to the similarities between Threads.

Accounts were already active for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets, including The Washington Post and The Economist.

Zuckerberg also offered a shot across the bow at Musk – the pair are known to be bitter rivals, and have offered to wrestle it out in a cage fight.

Threads was introduced as a clear spin-off of Instagram, which offers a built-in audience of more than two billion users, sparing the new platform the challenge of starting from scratch.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told users that Threads was intended to build “an open and friendly platform for conversations.”

“The best thing you can do if you want that too is be kind,” he said.

Zuckerberg is widely understood to be taking advantage of Musk’s chaotic ownership of Twitter to push out the new product, which Meta hopes will become the go-to platform for celebrities, companies and politicians.

“It’s as simple as that: if an Instagram user with a large number of followers such as Kardashian or a Bieber or a Messi begins posting on Threads regularly, a new platform could quickly thrive,” strategic financial analyst Brian Wieser said on Substack.

Analyst Jasmine Engberg from Insider Intelligence said Threads only needs one out of four Instagram monthly users “to make it as big as Twitter.”

“Twitter users are desperate for an alternative, and Musk has given Zuckerberg an opening,” she added.

Under Musk, Twitter has seen content moderation reduced to a minimum with glitches and rash decisions scaring away celebrities and major advertisers.

He has angered Twitter’s most devoted aficionados by declaring that access to its TweetDeck product – which allows users to view a fast flow of tweets at once – would be for paying customers only.(agency)/SHARE THIS