Threads Becomes Most Rapidly Downloaded App, Raising Twitter’s Ire Instagram’s new app was downloaded more than 30 million times in 16 hours. Twitter threatened legal action against its rival................ In less than a day, Threads — which is aimed as a rival to Twitter — appears to have taken the crown as the most rapidly downloaded app ever. It easily outstripped ChatGPT, the chatbot, which was downloaded one million times within its first five days .............. Some of Twitter’s most-followed users — such as Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Gates, Shakira and Oprah Winfrey — immediately joined Threads and began posting. ........... “Feels like the beginning of something special.” ........ The early momentum underscored people’s desire to find an alternative to Twitter, the 17-year-old digital town square that has long been the central place for public conversation online. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, the billionaire has instituted changes that have angered the social platform’s longtime users, especially those who do not care for his laissez-faire approach to content moderation. Twitter has also suffered from more outages and bugs. ........... In a post to Threads, Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, said that no former Twitter engineers were working on Threads. “That’s just not a thing,” he wrote. .......... One employee noted that morale was soaring internally after a year of layoffs and retrenching at the company. Another shared a meme of two characters from the 1999 film “The Mummy,” telling each other that Twitter has been “replaced by Meta,” according to a screenshot. .......... Threads was a crash project that spun out of Instagram seven months ago, after the company decided it wanted to “make a bet” and take on Twitter, said Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram............ The project, code-named “Project 92,” was a closely held secret, two people familiar with the project said. The team was small, and other parts of Meta did not have access to initial versions of the app, they said. ............ Mosseri said that he wanted Threads to be a “friendly place” for public conversation. ............. “Can’t get enough of your threads,” the actress Jennifer Lopez said in a Threads post, adding an emoji of musical notes. Ms. DeGeneres, in her first Threads post, wrote, “Welcome to Gay Twitter!” .......... Twitter still has the lead, with more than 237 million daily users .......... Instagram appears to be taking a hands-on approach to what can and can’t be posted to Threads to create a “friendly” app for conversations .......... Across the app, Threads obscured some posts behind a warning box indicating that the content was “reviewed by independent fact checkers” and ruled misleading. Users could click a button on the warning box to reveal the content. An additional pop-up box included a brief explanation about why the content was hidden and a link to a post by the fact checkers who made the ruling. ............... “Are you sure you want to follow” the person, the warning asked. “This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines.” The same warning appeared during attempts to follow those users’ Instagram profiles. .............. She had a dormant Twitter account and had once dreamed of owning a Tesla, the electric cars made by Mr. Musk, but had given up on both when the tech billionaire began tweeting more politically conservative messages. But she wanted to be part of the public conversation online, and she thought Threads might be a way to do that. .
Competition is fine, cheating is not
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones.” https://t.co/MavyysZCcP
— jack (@jack) July 6, 2023
A protocol that anyone can build upon. Not a clone.
— jack (@jack) July 6, 2023
No. Bluesky and nostr are protocols that Twitter can build upon. Would remove some constraints and burden. Not competitive.
— jack (@jack) July 6, 2023
😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023
Elon should unblock Substack.
— Balaji (@balajis) July 9, 2023
It’s a natural companion to Twitter.
It’s something Threads can’t match.
And it ensures that news breaks here. https://t.co/fd2cGE0Ytt
Mark Zuckerberg posted his first tweet in more than a decade, a lighthearted jab at Elon Musk on the day of Instagram's Threads launchhttps://t.co/QRVjwWVtdy
— Bloomberg (@business) July 9, 2023
Meanwhile Elon… def topic number 1 on threads 🤡🤭🤭👀 pic.twitter.com/TEl6IEL6Dd
— Run Down by Mia 🇵🇱 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇺🇸🌊🇪🇺NAFO (@MIA_May_Max) July 9, 2023
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