7/11/23, 7:08 AM Instagram’s Threads surpasses 100 million users - The Verge

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Instagram’s Threads surpasses 100 million users / It handily

beat ChatGPT to the milestone while Twitter traffic is ‘tanking,’
according to Cloudflare CEO.

By Jay Peters and Jon Porter

Updated Jul 10, 2023, 9:59 PM GMT+8
166 Comments / 166 New

Illustration: The Verge

Instagram’s new Threads app has already surpassed 100 million users, meaning
it reached the milestone dramatically faster than even ChatGPT. OpenAI’s
chatbot passed the mark after two months, but Threads, which only launched on
Wednesday, got there in a matter of days. The number of users can be found in
the Instagram app, which tracks the size of the Threads userbase.

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7/11/23, 7:08 AM Instagram’s Threads surpasses 100 million users - The Verge

Threads proved to be an early hit almost immediately. In the first two hours, it
hit 2 million users and steadily climbed from there to 5 million, 10 million, 30
million, and then 70 million. The launch has been “way beyond our expectations,”
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.

On Monday, Zuckerberg said in a Threads post confirming the milestone that

the growth was “mostly organic:”

zuck 9h
Threads reached 100 million sign ups over the weekend.
That's mostly organic demand and we haven't even
turned on many promotions yet. Can't believe it's only
been 5 days!

Instagram head Adam Mosseri also posted about it, likewise noting that it took
just five days to get there:

Users aren’t just signing up: they’re posting, too. As of Thursday, my colleague
Alex Heath reported that there have already been more than 95 million posts and
190 million likes shared on the app.

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That said, Threads is still in its infancy, and we’ll have to wait and see if it
captures the same cultural cachet that Twitter once did. Meta isn’t specifically
targeting trying to replace Twitter, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri,
and the company isn’t going to actively encourage politics and hard news on the
platform, but it could end up being the place people go for a conversation-based
social media platform. And while Meta “couldn’t be more psyched” about how the
launch week has gone, “we don’t even know if this thing is retentive yet,” Mosseri
said.

Although the numbers aren’t directly comparable, as of last November Twitter

had around 260 million monetizable daily active users, per a tweet from owner
Elon Musk at the time. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reports it’s been
telling advertisers that it has around 535 million monetizable monthly active
users. But external data suggests Twitter’s traffic has been on a downward trend
in recent months, with CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince posting to say traffic is
“tanking.”

Update July 10th, 3:58AM ET: Updated to add data on Twitter’s user numbers.

Update July 10th, 9:55AM ET: Updated to embed Threads posts from
Zuckerberg and Mosseri about the milestone.

166 COMMENTS (166 NEW)

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7/11/23, 7:08 AM Instagram’s Threads surpasses 100 million users - The Verge

More from this stream Instagram’s Threads: all the updates on the
new Twitter competitor

Meta’s CTO is doing an AMA later today.

Jul 11, 2023, 1:33 AM GMT+8

Apple’s Phil Schiller is on Threads.

Jul 11, 2023, 12:14 AM GMT+8

Here’s why Threads is delayed in Europe

Jul 10, 2023, 11:52 PM GMT+8

Instagram Threads bosses Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri

are just beside themselves.
Jul 10, 2023, 10:27 PM GMT+8

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