Threads, Facebook’s Twitter alternative rakes in over 30 million signups in one day, Twitter threatens to sue

We could be about to witness an InnBucks kind of launch for Threads. If you had forgotten, Threads is the latest in a growing list of Twitter alternatives. Could this one be the one to unseat Twitter, or at least offer proper competition in the microblogging space?

Threads has everything going for it at launch. Twitter is dealing with a data scraping problem that has seen them impose a very unpopular limit on the number of tweets users can see in a day.

This comes on the heel of months upon months of negative press for Twitter. Clearly stemming from the intense loathing many people have for Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner.

So, like InnBucks pounced when EcoCash was hobbled, Threads seems to have hit a similar jackpot.

Threads is an Instagram app. Which means it is a Meta app (the Facebook group). This group knows a little something about social media. They have 3 apps that have more than 2 billion monthly active users if you can believe it:

• Facebook – 2.98 billion
• WhatsApp – 2.78 billion
• Instagram – 2 billion

Threads is off to a great start. Updates from the Zuck himself show just how impressive Threads’ first day was:

• Threads passed 2 million sign-ups in the first two hours of going live
• It passed 5 million sign-ups in the first four hours
• Then it was 10 million sign-ups in seven hours
• After 16 hours Threads had a mind-boggling 30 million sign-ups

We got all those figures from Zuckerberg. He last updated us at 30 million but some digging shows it’s now up to just over 41 million users. Hopefully only a few bots among that number but who knows?

I signed up, as is my right and have 5 followers to show for my trouble. I think Threads is as close to a Twitter clone as you can get. It looks familiar as if you’ve used it before. That’s because you have used it before, just under a different name.

This copycat strategy is not new to Facebook (Meta). They have done similar stuff in the past, unashamedly. Their Snapchat clone failed but they ended up just incorporating Snapchat’s best features into Instagram.

If it works, it works. They didn’t have to sell people on the idea of a microblogging site, they just had to leverage their 2 billion user Instagram to launch an alternative that looks like the app they are trying to vanquish.

Threads still needs a bit of work though as even the Zuck admits.

Not a Twitter (yet?)

• The algorithm – I don’t quite understand how the algorithm works because my home screen is just a load of crap at the moment. I get that they don’t know what I like yet but I have followed a few people and organisations and they already know my Instagram activity, so I don’t know why my main feed is full of stuff I’m not interested in at all.
• No chronological order – I like seeing my tweets (threads) in the order that they were posted most times. Threads does not have that option.
• There is no support for multiple accounts yet – It’s just the one account for now. If you want to use a different account, you will have to log out of the one you’re using. This is not good for some of us who always have burner accounts to explore our darker selves. Or for those that may need to log into their personal account as well as a company one they manage (also me).
• No hashtags – Need I say more
• No Direct Messages (DMs) – This means every conversation you have on Threads has to be a public one. If you want a personal one-to-one, you will have to go elsewhere. Shoot your shot in public my friend, it’s an open society. If you need privacy, like a wimp, Zuck probably hopes you go to Insta, Messenger or WhatsApp.

It is the very first day so one can hope that it will only get better. I’m in for the ride, come join me on Threads, let’s see where this one goes. I still like Twitter a little more, not having been stung by the Elon-hate bug, but I still am curious to see where Threads goes from here.

Going back to the similarities between Twitter and Threads, Twitter says it goes deeper than that.

Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads

Twitter argues that Meta used Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property to build Threads. How did Meta get these secrets? – you ask. Meta hired “dozens” of ex-Twitter employees to develop Threads who still have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other confidential information. Or so Twitter lawyers argue.

Meta’s communications director says, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

Who is telling the truth? We’ll probably need the courts to determine that. Or maybe Musk and Zuck can settle the score in the cage fight they have going on later this year.

The fact that Twitter is already resorting to legal action to halt Threads’ progress shows that Twitter and Musk must be a little worried about the Traction it is getting. Musk says it not the competition he is fighting, no, he is just against stealing. Said Musk,

Competition is fine, cheating is not

It looks like we are in for a good show.

Also read:

Twitter imposes limits on tweets you can see per day as Instagram’s rival platform gets ready to launch

Twitter’s VVIP gold verification badge will cost a grand a month and SMS 2FA no longer be available on free accounts