Threads makes waves, surpasses 100 million user milestone in just five days

What just happened? Facebook parent company Meta introduced its Twitter competitor Threads less than a week ago. To say the launch has been a success would be the understatement of the century as the service has already attracted 100 million users in just five days.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri confirmed the milestone on Threads earlier today, and seemed just as surprised as everyone else by the service’s success out of the gate.

“They say “make it work, make it great, make it grow.” Well, we certainly did things out of order, but I promise we will make this thing great,” Mosseri added.

Threads’ launch has been nothing short of impressive. The service attracted two million signups in the first two hours, and blew past 10 million signups in seven hours. By the following morning, Threads already had 30 million registered users. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said the service hit 100 million signups over the weekend, adding that it was mostly organic demand. “We haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” he added.

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The success of Threads should not come as that big of a surprise, especially given the current state of social media. Twitter is a mess right now following Elon Musk’s purchase, but it is an established platform with years of operational time on its side. Threads is brand new although given Zuckerberg’s social media expertise, it’s a bit of a moot point.

The real challenge for Threads will be keeping users engaged on its platform. Google had a ton of success with Google+ in its early days, but ultimately failed to capitalize on it. Following a series of data breaches and no clear vision for the service, the search giant shut down Google+ in April 2019.

Both Zuckerberg and Mosseri acknowledged there is still a lot of work to do. Threads launched without support several core features including direct messages, hashtags, and post searching. The service also has strict guidelines against nudity.

What are your thoughts on Threads? Does it have a shot at long-term sustainability, or will the hype die down once Twitter settles down?