The new social network Threads, from the technological giant Meta, registered five million subscribers in the first four hours after it was available, said the founder of the social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.
“We just surpassed five million registrations in the first four hours”, wrote Zuckerberg, in a post on the official account on Threads (threads in Portuguese).
Meta, which owns the social networks Instagram and Facebook and the mobile messaging and calling application WhatsApp, intends to dethrone Twitter with this new social network.
Threads was available in 100 countries as of 00:00 today, but not in EU countries and ‘smartphones’ with Android operating system.
Instagram leader Adam Mosseri lamented that Threads is not, for now, available in the EU, explaining that if Meta had to wait for approval from Brussels, the launch would have been delayed for many months.
The launch of Threads was initially scheduled for 15:00 (Lisbon time) today, but was brought forward by the company to 00:00.
According to Meta, among the celebrities who have joined the new social network are Colombian singer Shakira, British cook Gordon Ramsay, and American actor Jack Black.
Entertainment and media giants such as Billboard magazine and The Hollywood Reporter, HBO television and the Netflix platform also have an account on Threads, as does US public radio National Public Radio (NPR).
In April, NPR announced that it was abandoning Twitter, after Twitter, owned by tycoon Elon Musk, placed the label “affiliated state press” on the radio’s main account, a term also used to identify controlled or heavily controlled media outlets. influenced by authoritarian governments such as Russia and China.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk rushed to criticize Threads, saying that the social network will collect all kinds of data from users, including identity, health and fitness, financial, location, purchases, contacts and “information” data. sensitive,” concerns also previously raised by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
The application, which is linked to Instagram, has an interface very similar to that of Twitter, but simpler: messages are grouped into two columns, “threads” and “replies”, and users can like, comment, share or forward the messages.
The launch of Threads comes after Elon Musk announced, on Saturday, a limit to the number of Twitter messages that can be consulted per account and per day, a decision criticized by users and advertisers of the social network.
On Monday, Twitter also announced that the TweetDeck dashboard, very popular with the most active users, will soon be accessible only to paid accounts.
*With Lusa
