In less than five days, Threads, a social media program meant to compete with Twitter, has amassed more than 100 million users.
The Meta-owned Instagram platform broke the previous record held by Open AI’s ChatGPT app.
Last Wednesday, Threads became available on the Apple and Android app stores in 100 nations, including the UK.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said he “couldn’t believe” the milestone had been attained so quickly.
Though it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Threads, it is still unavailable in mainland Europe due to doubts about its compliance with EU data privacy laws.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for industry, said on the matter for the first time in public, telling Franceinfo that “taking a little time to do so seems to me to be probably good policy.”
Despite its issues in the EU, Threads has had quick expansion. The app had 10 million users within the first seven hours of introduction, and more than 30 million by Thursday morning, according to Meta, which also owns Facebook.
That amount had more than doubled around 24 hours later.
It still needs to catch up to its primary opponent, though. With 100 million users, Threads has a smaller user base than the estimated 350 million Twitter users.
Since entrepreneur Elon Musk took over, some Twitter users have lost interest in the platform. Under his leadership, Twitter has seen the elimination of thousands of positions, and he has proposed a number of measures to increase income.