Barely five days after Threads launched, the latest social media platform already has 100 million users.

Meta started threads five days ago and Instagram’s new platform has already surpassed 100 million users.

The messengers

The news of the rapid growth of Meta’s latest acquisition was, how could it be otherwise, announced in threads by Mark Zuckerberg himself. Instagram boss Adam Mosseri couldn’t be left behind either. Finally, Threads is part of this platform.

Flying start

Threads was just released as an Instagram app last Thursday. With two billion members and one and a half billion monthly users, it was to be expected that the new microblogging platform would have many early adopters, but it is still a rapid growth. To put that in perspective, it took the hugely popular ChatGPT two months to reach that number of users.

Many thread members (threaders?) don’t just jump on the bandwagon, the accounts actually post and reply. It is striking that accounts can also be verified immediately, both Zuckerberg and Mosseri have a blue tick after their name. How do we remember it?

Whether many companies will find their way to Threads remains to be seen. WhatsApp is already a verified member, but as part of Meta, they probably didn’t have a choice.

Twitter thread

With Threads’ early success, eyes are even more on Elon Musk and his digital playground. The platform has seen some turbulence since its acquisition of Twitter, but things seem to have gotten worse in recent months. From a reading disability as a temporary low point.

The Blue Bird seemed to hold out for the time being, the predicted success of alternatives such as Mastodon has already died out. But direct competition with the meta-machine might be a different matter. Has Zuckerberg already given Musk a digital uppercut in preparation for his cage fight? We will see.

It remains to be seen how the litigation will play out: Threads is essentially a clone of Twitter, and Musk isn’t going to let that slide.