Meta finally launched its long-rumored Twitter-like microblogging app known as Threads. The app which is available for Android and iPhone was able to onboard over 2 million users in just two hours of its launch, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The occasion seems to be big enough that Zuckerberg is stepping foot on the roads he hasn"t traveled in years. The CEO took to his Twitter handle (that doesn"t have a blue checkmark) and tweeted for the first time in 11 years.
He posted the classic Spider-Man pointing meme without including any comment in his tweet. While the Meta CEO created his Twitter account back in 2009, the last time he tweeted was in January 2012.
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
The move appears to be a subtle acknowledgment that Meta and Twitter are now direct competitors. Meanwhile, the Threads topic was also trending on Twitter in the United States with over 1.16 million tweets at the time of writing.
Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion last year, were recently in the news for getting serious about a cage fight. However, it"s yet to be known if it"s going to happen for real.
The Meta-owned microblogging platform also includes mentions of Twitter in its app. You can click on the Share button on any Thread and the in-app UI presents an option to initiate a Tweet along with other options such as add to story or post on your Instagram feed.
The option to directly share a post on Twitter is also present on Instagram"s share UI but you need to make an extra swipe on the screen to discover it. It"s surprising to see that Meta chose to give Twitter more visibility than its own apps WhatsApp and Facebook.
The web version of Threads was publicly accessible ahead of its launch and it was possible to view the profiles of brands and creators who had early access to the platform. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey also took a dig at the data collection practices of the app.