Meta’s Twitter rival, Threads, logged 5 million sign-ups in its first 4 hours of operation, based on CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as the corporate seeks to woo customers from Elon Musk’s troubled platform via a suggestion of lengthier posts, a handful of movie star 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 accessible in 100 international locations on the Apple and Google app shops, though regulatory considerations imply it is not going to be accessible 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 stated preliminary movie star backers included Shakira and Gordon Ramsay, with a current 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 will select to comply with the identical accounts they comply with on Instagram, in the event that they too have joined the brand new app.

The app intently 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 function, famous for its similarity to TikTok’s short-form movies.

Posts on Threads will be 500 characters lengthy, in contrast with 280 for many Twitter customers, and movies of as much as 5 minutes in size will be posted whereas a put up will be shared as a hyperlink on different platforms. Customers can unfollow, block, limit or report others. Customers may 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 ought 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 are going to,” 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 ought to be fearful. Others identified the app’s speedy integration with Instagram confirmed simply how highly effective Meta has develop into. A lot of the dialog, paradoxically, 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 combat 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 precise your concepts”. Twitter has a person base of greater than 250 million, whereas Instagram reportedly has 2 billion customers.

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

Meta stated it was planning to make Threads appropriate 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 stated 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 appropriate apps will have the ability to comply with and work together with folks on Threads with out having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a brand new period of various and interconnected networks.” As with Mastodon, Meta envisages mini-communities forming with their very own neighborhood requirements and moderation insurance policies.

At the moment, the primary feed is a mix of content material that customers comply with, in addition to content material beneficial from the algorithm. There are at present no plans to permit folks to restrict that to solely folks they comply with. Individuals will preserve their usernames from Instagram, lowering the potential for folks name-squatting excessive profile usernames.

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

Mike Proulx, analysis director on the evaluation agency Forrester, stated 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 stated.