The New Rival of Twitter: Meta’s Threads as the Game-Changing Social Media Platform

Meta’s Threads app has been a buzzing word since its launch in 2023, with people talking about its potential to emerge as the biggest Twitter rival of the decade. Popularly known as ‘Twitter Killer,’ Threads has dominated over 100 countries since its introduction in the US. The world witnessed the power of Threads as soon as it launched, capturing 10 million users within seven hours. 

Although the growth of this newly invented social media platform dwindled after its launch, it continued to draw more users from 2024. According to recent CNBC news, this app had nearly 275 million monthly users in 2024, a rise of 175% from 100 million users in 2023. As of 2025, the Threads app has 33 million active users daily and more than 200 million monthly users. Threads' future in the social media world seems promising by looking at these statistics. 

This article in The Silicon Journal unveils the inside story of Meta’s Threads and how it has emerged to be a threat to Twitter.

Threads: An Evolution

Meta’s Threads is redefining people’s interaction with digital experiences, marking it as a significant development in the social media landscape. The Meta universe has witnessed significant transformations in the past few years after Facebook rebranded to Meta.

The Threads

The newly emerged social media platform Threads is a virtual reality (VR) platform that facilitates the building and personalization of digital avatars or “threads” by users of the meta-universe.  The digital universe allows users to connect and enjoy the immersive experience of the virtual world. Unlike Twitter and Instagram, Threads aims to offer a more seamless and immersive social experience to users. Through this application, real and virtual environments coalesce to open the door to a new world of communication and social interaction.

From Metaverse to Threads

Recent technological advancements in the digital arena with virtual and augmented reality have brought the concept of the metaverse closer to reality. Threads app is the biggest evidence of this phenomenon, with all the necessary infrastructure to fuse virtual and real-world. Exploring the potential of the metaverse, Meta has metamorphosed it from a social media colossus to a social media platform that ensures profound user connectivity in this digital era. This gave birth to Meta as Facebook rebranded to maximize the full potential of the metaverse.

Development in Threads

A social media app that started as an avatar in a virtual reality platform evolved rapidly into a social connectivity platform. Initially, Meta’s Threads started as an individual application in 2019, focusing fundamentally on video messaging using avatars and Insta-like photo editing tools. Now, it has evolved into a text-based community platform that leverages the user base of Instagram to create a safer public communication platform, emerging as a Twitter rival.

Amidst the chaos of Elon Musk taking over Twitter, Threads has emerged as a ‘Twitter killer’ app. Reflecting on the growing popularity of Threads, Mark Zuckerberg states, “We continue to be on track towards this becoming our next major social app.” Threads is now allowing 1 million users to sign up per day.

Utilizing the social side of the metaverse, Meta developed Threads as a social connectivity app that allows users to connect in virtual environments, participate in shared experiences, and attend events. Metaverse’s immersive power enables users to convey feelings through gestures, making the interaction more engaging. 

As per a Sensor Tower report, despite Threads' growing popularity, Twitter is still ahead of it, with approximately 318 million monthly users. However, with Threads’ continued growth, it is a potential threat to Musk’s Twitter.

The Inside Story

A small agile team of engineers working with Meta took Threads from scratch to a 275 million monthly user-driving social media platform within a short period.  Meta’s Thread stands as a testament to Meta’s lightning speed and ability to scale.  

Threads was introduced with the idea of creating an app that offers multiple features, from crafting avatars to text-based conversations that engagingly express feelings. Threads is a decentralized application established to allow people to share content across multiple platforms. On July 5th, 2023, Instagram users were invited to join a new social media platform, Threads, marking the first day of this app in the digital arena.

Leveraging Python used in Instagram’s backend, Threads resued its existing data models and server infrastructure to welcome Insta users to a new world of social connectivity. Making user login super simple, Meta’s Threads allows Insta users to log in to the app smoothly. With a highly scalable infrastructure, Threads managed to onboard 100 million users on the first day of its launch. 

Envisioning a decentralized future, Threads aims to make social content as interoperable as emails. For example, users of different email domains can send mail to each other, such as a Gmail user can send mail to a Yahoo mail user. Threads want that for social media platforms as well. As of now, users of one social media platform cannot connect with users from different social media accounts. Once achieved, this would be revolutionary for this Twitter rival and the entire social media ecosystem.