The head of Meta says that the app is a “friendly” option for the social network run by Elon Musk.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, said that 10 million people signed up for Threads in its first seven hours. Threads is a new social media app from Meta meant to compete with Twitter.
Soon after the new platform went live late Wednesday night, Zuckerberg wrote that users could “build something great together.” He said, “10 million people signed up in seven hours.”
Threads is on the online stores for Apple and Android in about 100 countries, but its release in the EU has been put off because of privacy worries.
People have said that the app is a strong competitor to Twitter’s domination in the social media market. Twitter has been criticised for changing its platform after Elon Musk bought it for a lot of money last year.
When asked on Thursday if Threads would become “bigger” than Twitter, Zuckerberg wrote on the site, “It’ll take some time.” “But I think there should be an app where 1 billion or more people can talk in public.”
He also said, “Twitter has had the chance to do this, but they haven’t done it right. We certainly hope so.”
Threads have many features similar to those on Twitter, but users can write notes with up to 500 characters instead of 280. The paid Twitter service Twitter Blue has a cap of 10,000 characters.
Soon after the app came out, American businessman Gary Vaynerchuk, also known as Gary Vee, posted on Threads. In response, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the app’s developers “are focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place.”
And in what seems to be a criticism of Elon Musk’s sometimes rude tweets, Zuckerberg wrote that “s**t-posting,” a term for the kind of online trolling Musk is sometimes accused of doing, is “not my style.”
Threads have the edge over social media sites like BlueSky and Mastodon, which are trying to take Twitter’s place because it has access to Instagram’s two billion users worldwide. Insider Intelligence’s industry expert Jasmine Engberg said that “to make it as big as Twitter,” Threads only needs one in four Instagram users to switch to the platform. AdWeek published her views on Wednesday.
Because Brussels is worried about how Meta handles personal information on its Facebook and Instagram sites, there has yet to be a sign of when the app will be available in the EU. Meta’s targeted advertising approach, which brings in billions of dollars yearly, depends on user information.
