Social media
Twitter copy threads fast with tens of millions of users
The announcement of the social media app Threads appears in Apple’s US App Store. photo
© Christoph Dernbach/dpa
Meta boss Zuckerberg launched a copy of a competitor. The Threads app is a kind of Twitter with an Instagram connection and has already attracted many millions of users.
Threads docks with Meta’s Instagram photo and video platform and is available in the US and over 100 other countries – but not in the European Union. The group refers to open questions in regulation.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri indicated in interviews that the new EU regulations with the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, which will take effect in the coming year, were a hurdle. The laws contain strict requirements for large online platforms. In the industry blog “Platformer”, Mosseri defended the decision to start without users in Germany and other EU countries. The choice was between leaving them out or “delaying the launch for many, many, many months,” he said. “And I was worried that the window would close for us.”
Twitter owner Musk is defiant
Threads’ launch follows a particularly turbulent day for Twitter, which has been troubled since it was taken over by tech billionaire Elon Musk. The short message service angered users over the weekend with a drastic cap on the number of tweets they can see per day for free. After Threads launched, Musk was defiant: it’s infinitely better to be attacked by strangers on Twitter than to indulge in the “false bliss” of Instagram.
The connection to Instagram is considered a significant starting advantage for threads. Because Meta can use it for its Twitter copy right from the start on existing connections between more than a billion users. Twitter hasn’t had any user numbers since Musk took over, the short message service used to have more than 300 million users.
Instagram users can easily apply their profile to the photo app for threads. Text posts on threads can be up to 500 characters long and can contain links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long. When Twitter was launched in 2006, the text limit was originally 140 characters and was later doubled to 280 characters.