More than 100 million users have signed up for Threads app in less than five days, surpassing the record of AI tool ChatGPT for the fastest-growing consumer app, data tracking websites said on Monday, AFP reports.
The app on July 6, was launched by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp as a rival to Musk’s Twitter.
The launch comes days after Musk announced that a temporary limit has been imposed on the number of posts users can read daily on Twitter.
Interestingly, while ChatGPT took two months to hit the 100 million user mark and video-sharing app TikTok took nine months, Instagram itself took two and a half years to reach that mark after its 2010 launch.
Considering the the European Union’s data privacy legislation, Meta is unsure how to navigate Europe after Threads achieved the feat of going live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries late on Wednesday. So, sources have revealed that it is currently not available in Europe.
Going memory lane on Twitter, the platform is thought to have around 200 million regular users but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Elon Musk bought the platform last year and sacked thousands of staff.
Tesla and SpaceX boss, Musk, also alienated many users by introducing charges for previously free services and allowing banned right-wing accounts back on the platform.
Several rivals have emerged but most are niche platforms without the capacity to grow at the necessary scale to dethrone Twitter.
On the advantage for Threads, the app is finding it easier because it is linked to Instagram, which has more than one billion regular users.
According to online data service Quiver Quantitative report, the app passed 100 million users at 0700 GMT on Monday, while other websites using a count of the “badges” received by Instagram users who have downloaded Threads reckoned the mark had passed earlier.
Meanwhile, Musk has threatened to sue Meta for stealing trade secrets and intellectual property, claims denied by the company, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp.
On their rivalry, the two men recently called each other out for a cage fight.
