BERLIN, July 6 — Twitter competitor Threads attracted more than 10 million users within hours of being launched by Facebook parent company Meta, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday, reported the German News Agency (dpa).
The new platform, which closely resembles Twitter's format, is connected to Meta's Instagram photo and video platform. Zuckerberg said it took just seven hours to pass the 10-million-user mark.
Threads is available in the United States and over 100 other countries but not in the European Union, which Meta said is due to unanswered regulatory questions there.
Instagram executive Adam Mosseri indicated in interviews that new EU regulations under the bloc's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, which will take effect in the coming year, present a hurdle. The laws contain strict requirements for large online platforms.
In an interview with tech industry news outlet Platformer, Mosseri defended the decision to start without EU users.
The company was forced to choose to either exclude EU-based users or 'delay the launch by many, many many months,' he said.
"And I was worried that our window would close because timing is important."
Threads' launch comes at a particularly turbulent time for Twitter, which has been troubled by chaos and instability since it was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk.
Twitter again angered users over the weekend by imposing a drastic new cap on the number of tweets users can see per day.
After Threads' launched, Musk was defiant in a tweet.
"It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram," Musk wrote.
— Bernama
