In a remarkable feat, Meta’s newly launched Threads app attracted ten million users within its first seven hours, according to Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO. Zuckerberg positioned the app as a “friendly” competitor to Twitter, which was acquired by Elon Musk in October. Experts believe Threads could appeal to Twitter users dissatisfied with recent platform changes.

Threads allows users to make posts of up to 500 characters and shares many similarities with Twitter. Zuckerberg emphasized that maintaining a “friendly” environment would be crucial to the app’s success. However, Musk responded that “it is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.”

When asked if Threads could become “bigger than Twitter,” Zuckerberg acknowledged that “it’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.”

“Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will,” the Meta boss added.

Critics of the app have raised concerns about the potential amount of data it may collect. The Apple App Store indicated that the app might gather health, financial, and browsing data linked to users’ identities. Some users have also expressed unease about the inability to delete a Threads profile without deleting the associated Instagram profile. Meta confirmed they are working on resolving this issue and stated that deactivating a Threads profile would not affect the associated Instagram account.

Meta assured users that they can download and delete Threads data by accessing their Instagram settings. The app is currently available for download in over 100 countries, excluding the EU due to regulatory concerns.