Instagram’s threads surpass 100 million users

Instagram’s new Threads app has already passed 100 million users, meaning it reached the milestone dramatically faster than even ChatGPT. OpenAI’s chatbot passed the mark after two months, but Threads, which only launched on Wednesday, got there within days. The number of users can be found in the Instagram app, which tracks the size of the Threads user base.

Users don’t just register: they also post. As of Thursday, my colleague Alex Heath reported that there have already been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app.

That said, Threads is still in its infancy, and we’ll have to wait and see if it captures the same cultural cachet that Twitter once did. Meta isn’t specifically aimed at trying to replace Twitter, according to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, and the company isn’t going to actively encourage politics and hard news on the platform, but it could end up being the place people go for a conversation- based social media platform. And while Meta “couldn’t be more psyched” about how launch week has gone, “we don’t even know if this thing is on hold yet,” Mosseri said.

Update 10 July at 3:58 a.m. ET: Updated to add data on Twitter user numbers.