Twitter Rival Threads Saw 23 Million Signups Overnight

Threads, Twitter’s Mark Zuckerberg-backed rival, is officially live, and it’s off to a strong start. According to a thread post by Zuckerberg on Wednesday night, the new service gained more than 10 million users in the first 7 hours it was available.

But if you tally up Instagram badges (a badge Instagram users get when they sign up for threads), that number jumped to 23 million as of Thursday morning. That’s far less than Instagram’s 1.3 billion active users and Twitter’s 335 million active users, but it’s certainly a good launching point.

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Several platforms have attempted to create a viable rival to Twitter, but so far none have been successful. However, as frustrations grow over the decisions made by Twitter and owner Elon Musk, it seems like this is the perfect opportunity for another service to finally become “the next Twitter.”

It certainly doesn’t hurt that Threads is basically a spinoff of Instagram. Instead of starting from scratch, it has a built-in user base that is several billion people strong.

To mark the occasion, Zuckerberg posted his first tweet since 2012 – Spiderman alluding to the Spiderman meme. Although it was intended to be a subtle shot at their competition and the similarities between the two platforms, he was a little less subtle on Threads, writing, “It’s going to take some time, but I think there should be a public conversation app with 1 billion on it.” Twitter has had an opportunity to do this, but it hasn’t taken advantage of it.”

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Naturally, there are some growing pains. At least for now, Threads doesn’t have an option to view a chronological feed of the people you follow. Instead, the algorithm pulls out posts from people it thinks you might want to see, based on who you follow. Additionally, there’s no way to edit a post, no hashtags, no direct messaging, no easy way to switch between multiple accounts, and it’s not available in Europe.

Another stumbling block at the moment is that there’s no way to fully use the platform on a web browser. Users can read through a regular browser, but posting is limited to the Android and iOS apps.

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Despite teething issues, users are at least interested in Threads. Of course, signing up to claim an account’s name is a far cry from actually using the service. Whether people continue to actively use the service is the question. If Zuckerberg takes the position of listening to users and responding to what they want, Threads could be in good hands.