Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced via his Threads account that the platform already got two million sign-ups in the first two hours of service. Threads is a standalone app managed by the Instagram team aimed at taking on Twitter.
One of the major issues with new social media platforms is that content can be scarce and it’s hard to find any of your friends as they probably haven’t signed up to that service. Threads has learned from the failures of other new social media platforms and pre-invited lots of celebrities and influencers onto the platform early so that there’s already content available.
The service has also received significant press coverage in recent days thanks to the countdown on the Threads website and the screenshots of the app posted in the App Store. The Android APK also leaked early and was subjected to a teardown analysis which shed some further details about the platform, all adding to the hype.
If you've not had a chance to try it yet, the app is very fast and carries a fair few features. One notable omission with Threads is the ability to search for content. You can do searches but it only brings up relevant accounts, it doesn't bring up any posts as the search feature does on Twitter.
Meta seems to have launched Threads at the perfect time because Twitter has recently been going through some stuff. It first stopped non-users from browsing the site, then it decided to rate limit users, and finally, it said it was taking away TweetDeck from people who weren’t willing to pay for Verified membership.
While Threads is off to a good start, it’s mainly early-comers signing up right now. The real test will be whether it can lure in enough people so that they can connect with their friends and family. Then again, Twitter isn’t really used for connecting to friends and family so maybe it won’t matter too much.
Let us know in the comments, have you signed up to Threads? What do you think of it?
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