Meta’s Twitter rival, Threads, logged 5 million sign-ups in its first 4 hours of operation, in accordance with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as the corporate seeks to woo customers from Elon Musk’s troubled platform by means of a proposal of lengthier posts, a handful of superstar backers – and a robust resemblance to its competitor.

The Fb and Instagram proprietor introduced ahead the app’s debut by 15 hours to 7pm EDT within the US and midnight within the UK, making it freely obtainable in 100 international locations on the Apple and Google app shops, though regulatory issues imply it won’t be obtainable within the EU.

Manufacturers reminiscent of Billboard, HBO, NPR and Netflix, and even us right here at Enterprise Issues had accounts arrange inside minutes of launch. Meta mentioned preliminary superstar backers included Shakira and Gordon Ramsay, with a latest report suggesting that Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama had additionally been approached.

Thread customers will want an Instagram account to log in. As soon as they’ve signed up, they’ll select to observe the identical accounts they observe on Instagram, in the event that they too have joined the brand new app.

The app carefully resembles Twitter visually, though a few of the wording has been modified, with retweets known as “reposts” and tweets known as “threads”. Meta has not been averse to copying rival merchandise previously, together with the 2020 launch of Instagram’s Reels characteristic, famous for its similarity to TikTok’s short-form movies.

Posts on Threads may be 500 characters lengthy, in contrast with 280 for many Twitter customers, and movies of as much as 5 minutes in size may be posted whereas a put up may be shared as a hyperlink on different platforms. Customers can unfollow, block, limit or report others. Customers also can filter out replies with sure phrases in them.

Meta has launched Threads within the wake of one other turbulent interval at Twitter, which imposed tweet viewing limits on the weekend in a transfer it blamed partly on knowledge harvesting by firms constructing synthetic intelligence fashions.

In subsequent Threads posts, Zuckerberg addressed these challenges. “I believe there needs to be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ folks on it. Twitter has had the chance to do that however hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we’ll,” he wrote.

Response to the debut on Wednesday ranged from warning to enthusiasm, many praising its ease of use and a few saying that Elon Musk needs to be anxious. Others identified the app’s speedy integration with Instagram confirmed simply how highly effective Meta has grow to be. A lot of the dialog, satirically, came about on Twitter, the place the hashtag “Threads” was trending on Wednesday night.

Information of Zuckerberg’s impending unveiling of Threads had resulted within the Fb founder and Musk apparently agreeing to a cage struggle over the matter, though a date has not been set for the unlikely confrontation.

Meta described Threads as a “new, separate area for real-time updates and public conversations”, aiming to “take what Instagram does greatest and broaden that to textual content, making a optimistic and inventive area to specific your concepts”. Twitter has a person base of greater than 250 million, whereas Instagram reportedly has 2 billion customers.

Meta mentioned the app would additionally resemble Twitter’s rivals reminiscent of Mastodon, which relies on a decentralised platform that may enable accounts to be transferred to different companies. It mentioned: “We’re working towards making Threads suitable with the open, interoperable social networks that we consider can form the way forward for the web.”

Meta mentioned it was planning to make Threads suitable with ActivityPub, expertise that additionally underpins Mastodon and permits social networks to be interoperable, which might let customers of Threads take their accounts and followers to different ActivityPub-supported apps.

Meta mentioned customers might cease utilizing the Threads app and switch their content material to a different service that makes use of the identical underlying expertise – reminiscent of Mastodon. “Our imaginative and prescient is that folks utilizing suitable apps will be capable of observe and work together with folks on Threads with out having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a brand new period of numerous and interconnected networks.” As with Mastodon, Meta envisages mini-communities forming with their very own group requirements and moderation insurance policies.

At present, the primary feed is a mix of content material that customers observe, in addition to content material advisable from the algorithm. There are presently no plans to permit folks to restrict that to solely folks they observe. Folks will preserve their usernames from Instagram, decreasing the opportunity of folks name-squatting excessive profile usernames.

Aware of criticism from politicians and campaigners over the security of kids on its platform, Meta is defaulting each UK Threads person underneath 18 to a non-public profile that may solely be considered by folks the person approves.

Mike Proulx, analysis director on the evaluation agency Forrester, mentioned Threads was “yet one more” copycat transfer however had been launched at a time of “peak Twitter frustration”, though {the marketplace} for rivalling Twitter was already flooded with options reminiscent of Hive, Bluesky and Mastodon. “This solely serves to fracture the Twitter alternative-seeking person base,” he mentioned.