More than 30 million people downloaded Instagram’s new app in just 16 hours. Twitter threatened its competitor with legal action. Mark Zuckerberg announced that more than two million people have downloaded Threads, Instagram’s new app for in-context, public talks, two hours after pushing the launch button on Wednesday.
That only marked the start.
Five million people had downloaded Threads by the end of an additional two hours. The number of downloads had risen to 10 million by the time Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, went to bed on Wednesday night. The app had more over 30 million downloads when he woke up on Thursday morning, he claimed.
The most quickly downloaded app ever, Threads, a Twitter rival, appears to have won the title in less than a day. The chatbot ChatGPT, which was quickly surpassed, had one million downloads in the first five days of its existence, according to OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator. According to the analytics company Similarweb, Threads is also expected to surpass 100 million users in less than two months, a feat previously only accomplished by ChatGPT.
Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Shakira, Ellen DeGeneres, and some of Twitter’s most well-known users all joined Threads right away and started posting. The mood was festive as users sent welcome notes and expressed excitement to read one another’s posts. The new app appeared unstable at one point because it was overrun with users. “This is as promising a beginning as we could have asked for!” Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp are all owned by Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, according to a post he made on Threads on Thursday. Feels like the beginning of something wonderful, he continued.
The first surge highlighted people’s desire to discover a substitute for Twitter, the 17-year-old virtual town square that has long served as the primary forum for online public discourse. Longtime users of the social media platform have been infuriated by the changes made by the billionaire since he acquired Twitter last year, especially those who don’t like his lax approach to content management. Additionally, Twitter has seen increasing issues and outages.
Mr. Musk is not ignoring Mr. Zuckerberg’s activities. Twitter’s legal team warned Meta in a letter dated Wednesday that it will face legal action for allegedly utilizing trade secrets belonging to its former workers to create Threads. In connection with a dispute between the two companies, Twitter additionally requested that Meta save internal documents. Semafor first reported on the letter.
On Thursday, Mr. Musk tweeted, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey took aim at Mr. Zuckerberg’s new app as well. He tweeted on Thursday, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones.” Andy Stone, a spokeswoman for Meta, said on Threads that no former Twitter engineers were now employed by the platform. That simply isn’t a thing, he wrote. Threads was a surprise success for Meta, which was desperate for a victory after being criticized for disseminating false information and other harmful content online. Although Mr. Zuckerberg’s social network was lauded in its early years, regulators, activists, and consumers dissatisfied with the way the business handles data and its products have criticized it in recent years. Concerns concerning Meta’s entry into the still-emerging immersive digital universe known as the “metaverse” have also been raised.
But for Mr. Zuckerberg and his business, this past week represented a brief reprieve. According to screenshots of the discussions seen by The New York Times, staff at Meta on Wednesday night celebrated the release of Threads by laughing together and sharing memes.
After a year of layoffs and retrenching at the company, one employee saw that morale was rising internally. Another person uploaded a meme of two characters from the 1999 movie “The Mummy,” who are seen in the screenshot saying that Twitter has been “replaced by Meta.”
According to Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, Threads was a crash project that emerged from Instagram seven months ago when the firm decided it wanted to “make a bet” and compete with Twitter. According to two persons familiar with the effort, code-named “Project 92,” it was a closely-kept secret. They said that the team was small and that other Meta departments were not given access to the app’s early versions.
In an effort to foster a culture of fun and discussion, celebrities, corporations, and influencers have recently been granted early access to the app. According to Mr. Mosseri, he wanted Threads to be a “friendly place” for public discourse.
The actress Jennifer Lopez posted on Threads, saying, “Can’t get enough of your threads,” and including a musical note emoji. Welcome to Gay Twitter! was the first thing Ms. DeGeneres wrote in her Thread.
However, such early momentum does not guarantee continued interest and success. According to the most recent publicly available data published by the firm last year, Twitter continues to lead with more than 237 million daily users. Regarding its data privacy policies, Meta is still being questioned.
A problem that may force users to destroy their connected Instagram account in order to deactivate their Threads account turned off some users of Threads. Instagram stated that it was working on alternative methods for users of Threads to cancel their accounts. In order to establish a “friendly” platform for talks, Mr. Zuckerberg has stated that Instagram appears to be taking a hands-on approach to what can and cannot be posted to Threads.
Throughout the app, Threads hidden some posts behind a disclaimer stating that the information had been “reviewed by independent fact checkers” and found to be deceptive. Users might reveal the content by clicking a button on the warning box. The reason why the content was concealed was briefly explained in a separate pop-up box, and a link to a blog post by the fact checkers who made the decision was also included.
Threads also seemed to completely conceal some comments. Right-wing influencer Tomi Lahren posted on the app for the first time, asking, “Will Meta be censoring conservative thought here too?” — a dig at established social media platforms that have previously edited out inaccurate and deceptive information. Some replies aren’t available, see the label that appeared at the bottom of the comments area on her post.
When users attempted to follow some influencers who Meta has previously warned about publishing incorrect or deceptive information, a further warning displayed.
The alert asked: “Are you sure you want to follow” the person. “This account has posted false information that was verified by independent fact-checkers or violated our Community Guidelines on numerous occasions.” Attempts to follow those users’ Instagram profiles brought up the same warning. Having effective content control is crucial for new Threads users like Kate Stone, a 63-year-old lawyer from North Carolina. She had a dormant Twitter account and had previously fantasized about buying one of Elon Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles, but she gave up on both once the tech mogul started posting more politically conservative statements. She believed Threads might be a way to do this since she wanted to participate in the online public conversation.
Although I dislike Mark Zuckerberg a lot, I read about Threads and saw that it was simple to set up if you have an Instagram account, Ms. Stone said in an interview. “So I decided to give it a try,” you say.
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SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com
