Threads launches

Meta's Twitter-rival starts strong but has challenges

- ALEX SUMMERSBY

THREADS, THE NEW social platform from Meta, has become the fastest growing app of all time-but faces some issues. Threads became available to the public on July 5, 2023, and after just five days had 100 million sign-ups. This eclipses ChatGPT, the previous record holder, which took two months to reach that mark. Even so, Threads is still some way short of Twitter's estimated 237 million users active daily.

The Threads app is available on iOS and Android in more than 30 languages and 100 countries. Because of privacy concerns, however, this does not include any EU member countries at present.

Meta, which also owns Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, astutely launched Threads just as Twitter users were disgruntled by the imposition of limits on the number of views allowed per day and the new requirement to be logged in to view tweets or profiles. There are also wider concerns about staff cuts at Twitter and what these mean for its future, with recent service reliability problems attributed to this cause.