The record was set by Open AI’s ChatGPT app, which was launched by the company that owns Instagram.
Last Wednesday, Threads became available on Apple and Android app shops in 100 countries, including the UK.
Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta, said that he “couldn’t believe” that the milestone had been hit so quickly.
Threads hasn’t had a completely smooth ride, though. It’s not yet available in mainland Europe because it’s not clear if it meets with EU data privacy laws.
In his first public comments about the situation, EU industry commissioner Thierry Breton told the French radio station Franceinfo, “Taking a little time to do so seems to me to be probably good policy.”
Even though it has problems in the EU, Threads has grown quickly. Meta, which also owns Facebook, said that 10 million people had downloaded the app in the first seven hours and that more than 30 million had downloaded it by Thursday morning.
After about 24 hours, that number had grown by more than twice as much.
Still, it has a long way to go to catch up to its biggest rival. Threads has 100 million people, which is less than a third of what Twitter is thought to have, which is 350 million.
Some Twitter users are unhappy now that Elon Musk, a businessman, is in charge. Under his watch, thousands of jobs have been cut, and he has made a number of changes to help Twitter make money.
Other competitors, like Mastodon and Bluesky, have popped up, but they have had trouble getting users because they don’t have any yet.
Threads has used the fact that it is connected to Instagram, which has more than a billion users, to its advantage.
When someone signs up for Threads, their Instagram page will have a link to their profile in the app. There is an option to hide this link.
Users must have an Instagram account in order to sign up for Threads.
You can’t get rid of your Threads profile without also getting rid of your Instagram page.
But turning off your Threads account won’t turn off your Instagram account.
Meta says that if you deactivate your Threads account, no one will be able to see your name, your posts, or your replies to other people’s posts.
