Threads hits 100 million followers as Twitter's traffic takes a dive

I'm sure Elon Musk is cracking a fat sweat right about now as Thread reaches over 100 million sign-ups within the first week as Twitter continues to dip.

According to Quiver Quantitative's Threads Tracker, the app is off to a flying start already accumulating a high amount of users.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, revealed that the app hit more than 10 million firsts in its first seven hours, with that figure later reaching more than 30 million on its first day.

And 24 hours after, that figure had doubled.

While still more work needs to be done as the app is merely the bare bones right now, The Meta CEO said Threads would mirror his other social media apps, adding the company would continue to build the product while accumulating over one billion followers and then monetising from it.

The app shares many similarities with Twitter, allowing users to post, share, like and follow other users, with Meta explaining that the app aims to 'take what Instagram does best and expand that to text'.

“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” reads the Thread app description.

“Whatever it is you're interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things.”

According to data from online tracker SimilarWeb, Twitter's traffic dropped by five per cent within the first two days of Threads being launched, compared to the same two days in the previous week.

Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, also noted that Twitter traffic ‘was tanking’ while sharing a graph showing volume requests for Twitter falling gradually.

Twitter traffic tanking. https://t.co/KSIXqNsu40 pic.twitter.com/mLlbuXVR6r

— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) July 9, 2023

And just to rub salt in that wound, The Guardian reported that Zuckerberg wants his new app to practice ‘kindness’ - something its rival failed at.

“The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success,” he said, as per the outlet.

“That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”