Twitter's formidable rival, Threads, surpasses 100 million registrations, outpacing OpenAI, while Twitter's traffic declines.

On Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that over the weekend, Threads reached 100 million registered users. He stated that this was primarily organic demand and that not much promotion had been done yet. It's hard to believe it's only been 5 days. This far exceeds expectations. The speed at which Threads reached the milestone of 100 million registered users is even faster than ChatGPT, the generative chatbot owned by OpenAI. ChatGPT reached over 100 million monthly users in just two months, which was an unprecedented expansion rate at the time. TikTok took about 9 months to reach 100 million users, and Instagram, owned by Meta, took about 2.5 years. However, it should be noted that Threads and Instagram share data securely. Users can directly log in with their Instagram accounts, and their profiles and external account links can be imported with just one click from Instagram. In the default focused recommendations, all friends come from the Instagram friends list. Given that Instagram has over 1 billion regular users, it's not difficult to understand the popularity of this new application, Threads. Compared to ChatGPT, Threads can be considered "born with a silver spoon". Analysis indicates that Threads still has a lot of room for growth as the app has not yet been launched in Europe due to some complex regulatory issues that need to be resolved. Last Wednesday, Meta announced that users can download Threads for free from the Apple App Store and Google Play in over 100 countries starting from that day. The app's user growth has been rapid, with over 2 million registrations within two hours of its launch, over 5 million registrations after four hours, over 30 million registrations within 16 hours, and over 70 million registrations in less than two days. Meta referred to Threads as an "Instagram-based text messaging app" during its release. People quickly discovered that it is essentially a replica of Twitter. Currently, its users mainly post text-based messages, with a maximum limit of 500 characters per post. Since it has just been launched, Threads still lacks some features that mainstream social media platforms have. Threads also does not have paid advertising yet, but many brands have already joined the platform. Investment bank Evercore ISI recently stated that although it is still in the early stages, Threads is expected to generate significant cash flow for Meta. It is projected that Threads will reach nearly 200 million daily active users and generate approximately $8 billion in annual revenue within the next two years. Compared to the revenue outlook for Threads mentioned above, Meta achieved a revenue of $117 billion last year with over 3 billion active users. Analysts on average predict that Meta's revenue for the fiscal year 2025 will reach $156 billion, far exceeding the estimated annual revenue of $8 billion for Threads. However, Threads has an advantage over Twitter in terms of prospects. Twitter achieved a revenue of $5.1 billion in its last full year as a listed company. Last summer, in Twitter's last financial report as a listed company, it stated that its monetizable daily active users were close to 238 million. Threads indeed poses a significant threat to Twitter. Meta executives, such as Instagram's CEO Adam Mosseri, have praised Threads as a more positive "public square," especially for those who have never fully embraced Twitter. Traffic data also confirms this. The CEO of Cloudflare shared a chart showing that since the launch of Threads, Twitter's user traffic has been "declining." According to Similarweb, a data company specializing in web analysis, Twitter's web traffic decreased by 5% compared to the previous week during the first two days when Threads became widely available. Twitter's web traffic decreased by 11% compared to the same period in 2022. On Monday, Twitter's newly appointed CEO Yaccarino stated that last week, Twitter reached a new high in daily usage since February. Twitter's owner, Musk, seems to have expressed some concerns about Threads' strong performance. His lawyer, Alex Spiro, wrote a letter to Meta accusing the company of "illegally misappropriating" trade secrets. Musk and Zuckerberg, these two Silicon Valley giants, have recently engaged in mutual taunting and even talked about fighting each other. They initially said they would "spar" and then mentioned the possibility of "dueling." Over the past weekend, the two of them exchanged more jabs, with Zuckerberg mocking Musk's tweeting style and Musk calling Zuckerberg a derogatory name. The specific content of their conversation was quite eye-catching.