The Threads application, created by Meta to compete with Twitter, crossed the 100 million user mark just five days after its launch, group founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed on Monday.
“Threads hit 100 million subscribers over the weekend,” the US entrepreneur said of his new app, insisting it had yet to receive “active promotion.”
Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, launched this “microblogging” application last Wednesday, the first major threat to the weakened Twitter platform since its takeover last year by billionaire Elon Musk.
According to data analytics firm Quiver Quantitative, the 100 million user threshold was crossed at 3 a.m. (EDT) Monday.
Earlier this year, the artificial intelligence application ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, took two months to reach this threshold of active users.
The number of users of Threads is still far from that of Twitter, which unites more than 350 million users. But Meta’s app can rely on synergies with popular image-sharing app Instagram, which has some 2 billion active users.
It is now necessary to have an Instagram account to be able to post content on the new platform, and during registration, it is possible to automatically import your community of subscribers.
Threads has yet to launch in the European Union, where the practice appears to be prohibited by the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), new legislation that will apply to digital giants from March 2024, experts say.
But it is possible to install it by downloading a version of the application from an unofficial store on Android phones, noted an AFP journalist.
Elon Musk decided to counterattack, sending through the lawyer for Twitter’s parent company, X Corp, a letter accusing Meta of breaching trade secrets and intellectual property rights.
Facebook’s parent company is notably accused of having recruited “dozens” of former Twitter employees, according to the document published by the Semafor news site.
Giving Meta formal notice to cease its actions, X Corp said it was ready to take legal action if it did not.
“Competition is not a problem. Cheating is one, ”denounced Elon Musk on Twitter.
Musk and Zuckerberg are also engaged in a communication battle, which is increasingly looking manly.
In June, the Tesla founder offered a “cage fight” to his rival, who replied, “Send me the location.” On Monday, the billionaire obscenely challenged his opponent on his social network.
Elon Musk bought Twitter at the end of 2022 for $44 billion before making massive layoffs and reopening the platform to conspiratorial accounts, resulting in a major loss of advertising revenue.