Meta’s Twitter rival Threads crossed 100 million sign-ups within the first five days of its launch, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the fastest-growing platform.
It’s not all good news for Threads, however, as Elon Musk’s microblogging platform, Twitter, is considering legal action against Meta.
Legal action pursued
Twitter, which was taken over by Musk last October for $44 billion, claims Meta stole trade secrets to develop its fast-growing rival Threads app, according to multiple reports.
Alex Spiro, an attorney for Twitter, accused Meta of engaging in “systemic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” in a letter dated July 5.
Whether Mark Zuckerberg’s latest has copied Twitter’s homework or not, that has not stopped users from flocking to it. The new app acquired 10 million users within seven hours of going live.
The number of people gathered by this Twitter alternative in just a few hours took Facebook 852 days, Twitter 780 days, and Google 16 days.
“That’s mostly organic demand, and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” wrote Meta boss Zuckerberg in a Threads post announcing the milestone.
The flying start of Threads has allowed it to even surpass the OpenAI-owned ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing internet application in history with a record 100 million monthly active users in January, according to a report by Swiss investment bank UBS.
Dubbed as the “Twitter Killer,” Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store in the UK and the US, as recorded on Thursday. It was unveiled after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Musk traded barbs for months, even threatening to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas.
Also read: Twitter Considers Legal Action Against Meta Over Rival Threads App
The fight begins
The real scrap between Musk and Zuckerburg is not inside the ring, but in the business world where the two tech billionaires are delivering punishing knocks to one another.
“The cage match has started, and Zuckerberg delivered a major blow. In many ways, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Meta: Stellar execution and an easy-to-navigate user interface,” said Jasmine Enberg, Insider Intelligence principal analyst.
Twitter is losing its audience after Musk’s acquisition and his random and chaotic announcements regarding the policy of the platform.
Musk has previously indicated that he was ready for this situation.
Elon Musk has said that he is expecting Twitter to break even in 2023.
“Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending toward breakeven if we keep at it,” said Elon Musk in a tweet in February.
However, Musk’s platform is facing strong competition right at the beginning of Threads.
“Meta’s release of Threads came at the perfect time to give it a fighting chance to unseat Twitter,” stated Niklas Myhr, a marketing professor at Chapman University, in reference to the upheaval at Twitter following its decision to restrict the number of tweets users can view.
Twitter traffic is ‘tanking’
While Threads continues to gain momentum, Twitter’s traffic is tanking, as evidenced by a screenshot shared on Twitter this Sunday.
Twitter traffic tanking. https://t.co/KSIXqNsu40 pic.twitter.com/mLlbuXVR6r
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) July 9, 2023
“Twitter traffic tanking,” wrote Mattheu Prince, CEO of Cloudflare as he shared the chart on Twitter.
Web analytics data company Similarweb reports that Twitter experienced a 5% decline in web traffic during the first two full days of Threads’ general availability, compared to the previous week.
Additionally, they found that Twitter’s web traffic decreased by 11% when compared to the same days in 2022.
Cumulative user-seconds per day of phone screentime, as reported by iOS & Android, is hardest to game. I think we may hit an all-time record this week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2023
“I think we may hit an all-time record this week,” wrote Musk in response to CEO Linda Yaccarino’s tweet about Threads.
and then