Threads, Meta's Twitter competitor, has surpassed 10 million sign-ups in its first few hours of Launch

Within the first few hours of its introduction, more than 10 million individuals joined up for Threads, Meta's challenger to Twitter, according to Facebook parent company CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Threads is the most serious opponent to Elon Musk's Twitter, which has seen a slew of prospective rivals emerge but has failed to replace one of social media's most iconic firms, despite its catastrophic troubles.

The app became online on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries on Wednesday at 23:00 GMT (4:30 am IST), with no adverts for the time being.

"10 million sign ups in seven hours," Zuckerberg posted Thursday on his official Threads account.

Accounts for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and Hugh Jackman, as well as media organisations such as The Washington Post and The Economist, were already active.

Zuckerberg responded to new users throughout the first several hours of the platform's introduction.

"One thing that's up is the number of world champion MMA fighters on Threads, especially now that you're here!" he commented in response to MMA fighter Jon Jones from the United States.

"Round one of this thing is getting off to a good start," he added in another.

Zuckerberg also fired a shot across Musk's bow – the two are known to be ardent rivals, and have even offered to wrestle it out in a combat cage.

In his first Twitter in nearly a decade, Zuckerberg shared a Spiderman pointing at Spiderman parody, an apparent nod to the sites' similarities.

"It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it," he wrote on Threads. Twitter has had the opportunity to do so, but has failed to do so. We can only hope."

Twitter claims to have over 200 million daily users.

Be considerate

Threads was released as an obvious spin-off of Instagram, which has a built-in audience of more than two billion users, avoiding the problem of beginning from zero for the new platform.

Zuckerberg is generally believed to be exploiting Musk's tumultuous ownership of Twitter in order to launch the new platform, which Meta believes will become the go-to communication route for celebrities, businesses, and politicians.

"It's as simple as that: if an Instagram user with a large number of followers, such as a Kardashian, Bieber, or Messi, begins posting on Threads regularly, a new platform could quickly thrive," strategic financial analyst Brian Wieser remarked on Substack.

Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Engberg stated that Threads just needs one out of every four Instagram monthly users "to make it as big as Twitter."

"Twitter users are desperate for an alternative, and Musk has given Zuckerberg an opening," she continued.

Threads, according to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, is meant to provide "an open and friendly platform for conversations."

"The best thing you can do if you want that, too, is to be kind," he said.

Under Musk, content monitoring has been reduced to a bare minimum, with faults and impulsive judgements driving away celebrities and large advertisers.

Musk hired advertising professional Linda Yaccarino to help steady the ship, but she has not been immune to Musk's whimsy.

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he was restricting access to Twitter in order to prevent AI companies from "scraping" the site to train their system.

Musk then enraged Twitter's most ardent fans by announcing that access to its TweetDeck tool, which lets users to watch a rapid stream of tweets at once, would be restricted to paying subscribers exclusively.

The EU is'many months' away

Meta has its share of detractors, particularly in Europe, and despite Instagram's large user base, they may stymie the site's growth.

The corporation is mostly chastised for its management of personal data, which is required for targeted adverts, which allow it earn billions of dollars in revenues every quarter.

Mosseri expressed sorrow that the EU launch had been delayed, but stated that if Meta had waited for regulatory clarification from Brussels, Threads would have been "many, many, many, many, months away."

"I was concerned that our window would close because timing is critical," he told Platformer, a tech news website.

According to a source close to the situation, Meta was concerned about a new regulation known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which establishes rigorous guidelines for the world's "gatekeeper" internet corporations.

One guideline prohibits platforms from moving personal data between products, which may possibly apply to Threads and Instagram.

Meta was caught doing just that when it purchased the messaging software WhatsApp, and European regulators will be on the watch to ensure that the corporation does not do the same with Threads.

Return to Twitter? 

The Threads hashtag on Twitter has received over a million tweets globally, with many users sarcastically predicting that people will return to Twitter.

"I'm 10 minutes into the Threads app. "I'm returning to Twitter," one user said, posting a video of a man running.

Another user posted a video of Homer Simpson dashing between the Twitter and Threads logos.

Threads was the most trending subject on Japan Twitter by lunchtime local time Thursday, although many users raised worries over data privacy.

"Isn't Threads run by Meta?" "It will definitely leak your real name or the game you're playing, or add you to a list of your workplace company friends," one customer commented.

"Meta loves to collect private information, and I don't trust how it treats private information," stated another. I also got the idea that this is a corporation that the EU despises, therefore I'm hesitant."