Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter Killer Is One of the Fastest Growing Apps Ever

Has anybody checked in on Elon?

Threadheads Rise

Instagram's freshly-minted Twitter rival Threads is officially the most rapidly downloaded app in history.

As The New York Times reported on Thursday, the "Twitter killer" had been downloaded over 30 million times by that morning — just a day after it was made available to the public on Wednesday. OpenAI's ChatGPT, which previously held the record for the fastest-growing app ever, was downloaded a comparatively measly one million times in its first five days on the market.

"Feels like the beginning of something special," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose company owns Messenger and WhatsApp in addition to Facebook and Instagram, wrote in a Threads post.

But the success hasn't stopped there. By Friday morning the app reached over 70 million signups.

Zucko W

We're sure the success of Meta's Twitter rival isn't sitting well with Twitter owner and billionaire Elon Musk, whose company has already threatened to sue Meta for allegedly copying his platform.

That said, Threads' immediate success seems to hinge on several factors, not the least of them being the fact that Twitter's infrastructure is actively crumbling as the result of Musk's many missteps.

In a big way, this is a mess of Twitter's own making, allowing Zuckerberg to swoop in. Meta's app is only one of several Twitter alternatives — Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Bluesky app included — that have gained popularity in recent months as a growing number of disgruntled Twitter users seek to jump ship.

Of course, Meta's already-massive hold on the social media landscape plays a major role in Threads' growth, too. Between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Meta has a stronger footprint in the marketplace than any company in the world. And because Threads is an Instagram app, Instagram users were essentially able to migrate their existing followings over to the new, text-based platform without a hitch.

In any case, cheers to Zuck, who — as his wildly expensive metaverse vision seemingly continues to die on the vine — has certainly been sniffing around for a win.

Has anybody checked in on Musk?

More on Threads' big week: Furious Elon Musk Is Threatening to Sue Meta for Ripping off Twitter