The rival to Twitter launched by Meta Platforms’ (META:NASDAQ) – Threads – has become the fastest app ever to blast through the 100 million users mark. Having launched on 7 July, the new microblogging platform made the breakthrough in less than a week. By contrast, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, previously the fastest app to 100 million users, took about two months to get there earlier this year.

The Threads launch has been ‘way beyond our expectations,’ said Meta’s chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Threads has many features in common with Elon Musk’s beleaguered Twitter, although not yet elements like hashtags and direct messaging. These similarities have prompted threats of legal action, although some legal experts have said copyright infringement could be almost impossible to prove.

Despite its rapid user growth, Threads still has some way to go to match the latter’s 300 million users. Threads is available in about 100 countries, including the UK, but not yet in the EU.

Twitter struggled for years to generate net profit, turning a corner in 2018 and 2019, only to fall back into the red since. In 2022, Twitter reported a $221.4 million net loss on total revenue of $4.4 billion, a 12% decrease from 2021, made largely from advertising.

Wall Street analysts have downplayed Threads’ impact on Meta’s financials in the near-term given the company’s focus on user growth and not on monetisation, although analysts at Evercore ISI have argued that the new app ‘poses very little downside for Meta’s current business but creates revenue and profit upside optionality for the company’.

‘Over the next couple of years, we estimate Threads could potentially reach close to 200 million daily active users and generate $8 billion in annual revenue, or 5% upside to our current 2025 revenue estimate for Meta,’ said Evercore ISI in a note to clients.

‘Assuming 50% incremental margins, we estimate that $8 billion in Threads revenue would generate almost $1.50 in incremental EPS (earnings per share), or 6% to 7% accretion to Meta’s 2025 estimated EPS.’

But there are other concerns too, such as how it manages the regulatory environment, particularly around the thorny issue of user data privacy.

Mark Zuckerberg has pitched Threads as a ‘friendly’ refuge for public discourse online, framing it in sharp distinction to the more adversarial Twitter. ‘We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place,’ said the Meta CEO shortly after the app’s launch.

But maintaining that idealistic vision for Threads is another story, and it will likely find itself eventually courting the same complaints about hate-speech, any number of ‘isms’, online stalking and other societal issues that still dog Twitter.

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