In just 16 hours, the new Instagram app had more than 30 million downloads. Twitter threatens to sue its competitor in court. On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg said that more than two million people had downloaded his newest innovation, Threads, the new program for real-time, public chats from Instagram.
That was only the start.
Five million people had downloaded Threads by another two hours. The number of downloads had reached 10 million by the time Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, went to bed on Wednesday night. The software had been downloaded more than 30 million times when he awoke on Thursday morning, he claimed.
Threads, a Twitter rival, appears to have overtaken all previous records for fastest app download speed in less than a day. It vastly outperformed ChatGPT, the chatbot, which, according to OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator, was downloaded one million times in its first five days. According to the analytics company Similarweb, Threads is also on track to surpass 100 million users within the next two months, a milestone that has only been reached by ChatGPT.
Many of the most well-known Twitter users, like Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Gates, Shakira, and Oprah Winfrey, joined Threads right away and started posting. Users wrote welcoming notes and expressed excitement to read one another’s writings, creating a joyful atmosphere. The new app briefly appeared unreliable because of the high volume of users. This is the best beginning we could have asked for. In a post on Threads on Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg, whose firm owns Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp, stated. Feels like the start of something extraordinary, he later commented.
The early momentum highlighted the need for an alternative to Twitter, the 17-year-old digital town square that has long served as the primary forum for online public discourse. Longtime Twitter users have taken offense at the changes the billionaire has made since he acquired the social media network last year, especially those who don’t like his lax approach to content management. Additionally, there have been more issues and outages on Twitter.
The acts of Mr. Zuckerberg are not being taken lightly by Mr. Musk. Twitter’s legal team threatened legal action against Meta in a letter dated Wednesday and accused it of stealing trade secrets from its former employees to create Threads. Additionally, Twitter requested that Meta save any internal records important to a dispute between the two businesses. Semafor has previously reported on the letter.
Competition is good, but cheating is not, tweeted Mr. Musk on Thursday.
The co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, also made fun of Mr. Zuckerberg’s new software. On Thursday, he wrote, “We wanted flying cars, but instead we got 7 Twitter clones.” A representative for Meta, Andy Stone, said on Threads that no ex-Twitter engineers were now employed by the company. He wrote, “That’s just not a thing. Threads was a pleasant surprise for Meta, which had been under fire for disseminating false information and other harmful material online. While Mr. Zuckerberg’s social network was lauded in its early years, regulators, activists, and users dissatisfied with the way the business handles data and its products have recently criticized it. Concerns have also been raised concerning Meta’s entry into the so-called metaverse, an immersive digital universe that is still in its infancy.
But Mr. Zuckerberg and his business enjoyed a respite this week, if only for a little while. According to images of the discussions seen by The New York Times, staff at Meta celebrated the debut of Threads on Wednesday night by exchanging inside jokes and memes.
One worker said that after a year of layoffs and retrenching at the company, morale was at an all-time high. A screenshot from another user’s post showed two characters from the 1999 movie “The Mummy” telling each other that Twitter had been “replaced by Meta.”
According to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, Threads was a crash project that Instagram launched seven months ago in an attempt to “make a bet” and compete with Twitter. According to two people with knowledge of the initiative, which went under the codename “Project 92,” it was kept a closely-kept secret. They said that because of the small team’s lack of access to early versions of the app, other areas of Meta were not aware of it.
Over the previous few days, celebrities, corporations, and influencers were given early access to the app by Meta in an effort to foster a culture of fun and conversation. Threads should be a “friendly place” for public discourse, according to Mr. Mosseri.
Jennifer Lopez, an actress, wrote on Threads, “Can’t get enough of your threads,” along with an emoji of musical notes. “Welcome to Gay Twitter!” Ms. DeGeneres wrote in her first Threads post.
However, such early momentum does not always convert to success and engagement over the long run. With more than 237 million daily users, Twitter continues to lead, according to the most recent statistics made available to the public by the business last year. Concerns concerning Meta’s data privacy regulations are still present.
Another thing that turned off some Threads users was the possibility that they would have to remove their Instagram account in order to delete their Threads account. Instagram stated that it was investigating additional options for Threads users to cancel their accounts. According to Mr. Zuckerberg, Instagram looks to be taking a hands-on approach to what can and cannot be posted to Threads in order to build a “friendly” platform for conversations.
Some posts were hidden behind a warning box on the Threads app, stating that they had been “reviewed by independent fact checkers” and found to be deceptive. The content of the warning box might be revealed by users clicking a button there. A second pop-up window added a link to a post by the fact checkers who made the decision as well as a brief explanation of why the item was concealed.
Also, several comments seemed to be completely hidden by threads. Right-wing influencer Tomi Lahren posed the question “Will Meta be censoring conservative thought here too?” in her debut post on the app. — a dig at established social media platforms that have in the past removed inaccurate and deceptive content. A notice with the words “Some replies aren’t available” appeared at the bottom of the comments area on her post.
Users who attempted to follow some influencers who Meta had previously warned about sharing fake or deceptive information were met with yet another warning.
The alert questioned, “Are you sure you want to follow” the person. The Community Guidelines were violated or inaccurate information that had been verified by independent fact-checkers was regularly posted by this account. When attempting to follow those users’ Instagram profiles, the same warning displayed. Having appropriate content control is crucial for new Threads users like North Carolina attorney Kate Stone, 63. She originally had aspirations of purchasing a Tesla, one of Elon Musk’s electric vehicles, but she gave up on both when he started tweeting more politically conservative sentiments. She also had a dormant Twitter account. However, she desired to participate in online discussions in public, and she believed that Threads might be a means to do so.
In an interview, Ms. Stone stated, “I read about Threads, and I don’t like Zuckerberg very much, but I saw it was easy to do if you have an Instagram account.” “So I decided to give it a shot,”
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SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com
