Last July, Meta surprised and launched X (formerly Twitter) Threads, a social network that emulates almost anything with some limitations. The service benefited from the ups and downs experienced by Elon Musk’s platform, but was unable to land in Europe due to possible regulatory issues. Now he’s finally doing it.

I was about to fall. Rumors about Threads potentially coming to European countries have been brewing for weeks, and just a week ago the definitive sign came: The official Threads.net website (Spanish IPs, for example) started showing a countdown. As this information shows, Threads will be available on December 14 at 12:00 UTC. And so it was: Mark Zuckerberg confirmed this in his own account on the service at that moment.

Topics in Spain (and Europe). The launch of the social network has finally happened after these months of waiting, during which Meta resolved theoretical issues that could affect its distribution in Europe, and RGPD had already given it a good scare a few months ago. In reality it was possible to use the social network in Spain with “shortcuts”, but the distribution will now finally be official.

Meta had already warned: Europe made their job difficult. In the summer, Meta spokesperson Christine Pai specifically noted “impending regulatory uncertainty” in a veiled reference to the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and its guidelines on data collection and sharing. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, towed a similar line in July, talking about the “complexity of complying with some laws.” The Executive referred specifically to the DMA and the Digital Services Act.

The network is getting stronger. Initial interest in Threads was notable – TechCrunch cited Apptopia data: On September 1, downloads were around one million, but through October downloads remained in the 400,000 range. By the end of November, business picked up again, and by the beginning of December, daily downloads exceeded 600,000. During the period reviewed on Apptopia (September 1 through early December), Threads was downloaded 41 million times.

But X (right now) is too much X. Even so, it is estimated that X currently has around 500 million active monthly users. The size of Elon Musk’s social network remains far more significant, at least from this perspective, as recent accounts show that Threads hit 100 million registered users just five days after launch, although it took a while to reach that figure. : He actually didn’t do it until the end of October 2023. Zuckerberg confirmed that number of active monthly users at the time, but added that he believed the app had a “very good chance” of reaching 1 billion users within a few years.

Continuous evolution. They’re slowly implementing significant improvements to Threads (English and Spanish searches, web version, edit button, account switch), but one thing won’t change for now: There will be no chronological search results because according to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s post “this “It will create an important security loop.” No longer affiliated with Instagram, the social network faces the challenge of unseating X; This is something no alternative (Mastodon, BeReal) has achieved, despite criticism of Musk’s strategy.

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