Threads, a Twitter competitor app, has already surpassed 50 million users and nearly 100 million posts just over 24 hours after its launch.
The anticipated app was introduced at midnight on Wednesday night by the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and it now has 190 million likes.
It’s a significant victory for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his struggle with Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter in October.
Twitter has vowed to sue Meta for stealing trade secrets using Threads. However, Meta has retaliated by pretending to deny that former Twitter workers participated on the app’s development and exploited insider information.
At around 4 p.m. UK time yesterday, Mr. Zuckerberg announced on Threads that more than 30 million users had signed up for his new competitor messaging service.
Then, around eight hours later, at midnight last night UK time, Alex Heath, editor at news website The Verge, posted on Threads: ‘This app has crossed 48 million sign-ups, per internal Meta data supplied with me.’
About one hour later at 1am this morning, New York-based digital communications expert Joe Scannell announced that the app has seen ’50million sign-ups in a little over 24 hours’, labelling the amount of 50,086,772 as ‘crazy’.
It comes after a Twitter lawyer sent Mr Zuckerberg a cease-and-desist letter saying Threads is a ‘copycat’ of the Musk-owned platform.
Alex Spiro, Twitter’s lawyer, accused Meta of “systemic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
The letter, first published by Semafor, accused Meta of recruiting ‘dozens’ of former Twitter employees who ‘have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.
Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, stated in a tweet mentioning the letter last evening, ‘Competition is fine, cheating is not.’