Meta's Threads App Draws Millions Seeking a Twitter Alternative

Still, the timing for the launch seems propitious.

Since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October, the company has cut thousands of employees, loosened its content moderation policies and put users and advertisers through a spate of technical challenges.

Twitter, which has more than 300 million subscribers, is hurting financially, too.

Advertising revenue at the San Francisco-based company has declined by 50%, Musk said in March, and he recently hired Linda Yaccarino, a NBCUniversal executive, as chief executive officer to try to improve relationships with brands.

“We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” Yaccarino said in a tweet without naming Meta’s new app. “YOU built the Twitter community. And that’s irreplaceable. This is your public square.”

As of the Wednesday launch of Threads, Twitter is still limiting how many tweets per day users can view — a measure Musk called “temporary” in order to fend off data scrapers and bots.

Other Options

Those restrictions are only the latest move prompting Twitter users to seek alternatives. But most of the company’s previous direct challengers, such as Bluesky and Mastodon, haven’t built up networks big enough to give posts the reach and impact they have on Twitter.

Many new alternative networks are also still building out systems for managing harmful, inappropriate or violent content.

Threads will embark with all those mature company systems in place, thanks to Instagram’s existing infrastructure. The app will have the same content rules as Instagram, with the same controls for muting and blocking harassing accounts.

Public figures who have verified accounts on Instagram can maintain their blue badges on Threads. Earlier this year, Twitter turned verification into a paid-only feature.

“People are looking for an experience where they have more control, and where safety is built into the product from the start,” Hayes said.

Another selling point, Hayes said, is that Threads is built on the same ActivityPub social-networking protocol as Mastodon and other decentralized social-media apps.

That means people who build followings on Threads eventually will be able to use the app to interact with a wider community beyond Instagram. It’s the first Meta app that will be interoperable with competing products, though Hayes didn’t give a timeline for that update.

Threads is also launching without ads — for now, the focus is to get as many people excited about the product as possible, Hayes said.

Shares of Meta were little changed in New York at 3:12 p.m. on Thursday, amid broader stock market declines after the latest U.S. jobs data; Snap Inc. was down about 2%. On Friday, Meta rose 0.81% to $294.36 at 1:34 p.m., while Snap fell 0.13% to $11.90.

–With assistance from Edwin Chan, Michael Sin, Ville Heiskanen and Natalie Lung.

(Credit: Bloomberg)