Staff Writer
Data tracking websites said on Monday that the Threads app, which Instagram released as a competitor to Twitter, has racked up more than 100 million users in less than five days, shattering the previous record-holder for the fastest-growing consumer app, ChatGPT, an AI tool.
Instagram itself took two and a half years to achieve that threshold following its 2010 inception, while ChatGPT took two months and the video-sharing service TikTok took nine months.
Late on Wednesday, Threads went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 different countries. However, it is not yet available in Europe since parent company Meta is unsure how to deal with the data protection laws in the European Union.
Twitter is estimated to have 200 million active users, but since Elon Musk acquired the service last year and fired thousands of employees, there have been numerous technical issues.
In addition to alienating many users, Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has turned back banned right-wing accounts and added fees to previously free services.
A number of competitors have developed, although the most are specialized systems unable to surpass Twitter in size.
Due to its connection to Instagram, which has more than a billion regular users, Threads is finding it to be simpler.
At 7:00 GMT on Monday, online data provider Quiver Quantitative claimed that the app had reached 100 million users.
Other websites that used a count of the “badges” that Instagram users who downloaded Threads got concluded that the milestone had already been reached.
Musk has threatened legal action against Meta, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, alleging that the firm stole trade secrets and intellectual property.
Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, are at odds, and recently challenged one another to a cage match.
