Meta’s Threads breaks records, crosses 100 million sign-ups in 5 days

Meta's new app Threads, a rival to Elon Musk's Twitter, reached 100 million sign-ups in just five days, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Monday. This makes it the fastest-growing online platform ever, beating ChatGPT's record of two months. Threads has seen a surge of users since its launch on Wednesday, with many celebrities, politicians and influencers joining the platform that analysts view as the first serious threat to Twitter. Zuckerberg said in a Threads post that the app's growth was mostly organic and that they had not done much promotion yet.

Twitter, which had about 240 million daily active users as of July last year, has seen its web traffic decline since Threads' launch, according to web analytics firms. Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted on Monday that the platform had its "largest usage day" since February, but did not give details. Other competitors to Twitter, such as Mastodon, Bluesky, Truth Social and T2, remain relatively small and niche at this point.

Musk has accused Meta of stealing Twitter's trade secrets and threatened to sue them, but legal experts say that claim could be hard to prove.

Threads is similar to Twitter in many ways, but it also has some differences and limitations. It allows longer posts and videos, but it does not have direct messaging, a desktop version, hashtags or keyword search functions yet.

Zuckerberg said they would only think about monetizing Threads once it reached 1 billion users. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Threads aimed to focus on light topics like sports, music and fashion, but he admitted that politics and news would also appear on the app.

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