Reportedly, Instagram created Threads in just five months. While some think it’s more likely that Meta has been working on a Twitter competitor for years, this was said by Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri himself.
A user asked the CEO of Instagram how things have been going since Threads launched a few weeks ago. Mosseri said it was better than expected, but not close to what they wanted. This also coincides with a report that says Threads has been bleeding out since launch.
What Mosseri said later seems more revealing. According to the CEO, Threads was created by a small team in about five months. He also said that they released the app earlier than they originally planned because they thought they were running late.
Accordingly, we can understand that the company did not start developing Threads until February 2023, only four months after Elon Musk took over Twitter. On the other hand, it gives the impression that the company had a unique opportunity to launch this service while Twitter was experiencing the share limit scandal on July 4th.
Threads has been around for two weeks and has a decent following. The social media app already has over 100 million users, but only about 23 million of them are daily active on the platform. This figure still pales in comparison to Twitter’s more than 100 million daily active users.
While Threads has had a great launch, Twitter still has a long way to go if it wants to replace its cultural relevance.