Who Owns Threads?

Threads was developed by Meta's Instagram team and launched on July 5, 2023. The timing was deliberate and strategic: Elon Musk had acquired Twitter in October 2022 and subsequently made a series of controversial changes including mass layoffs, the introduction of paid verification, content moderation policy changes, and the rebranding of Twitter to X. These changes created significant user dissatisfaction and an opening for a competitor.

Meta's Instagram team, led by Adam Mosseri (head of Instagram), built Threads as a companion app to Instagram, designed to capture users who were frustrated with Twitter/X and looking for an alternative. The decision to tie Threads to Instagram accounts was strategic: it gave Threads instant access to Instagram's social graph (who users follow and who follows them), eliminating the cold-start problem that typically plagues new social networks.

The launch was one of the most successful in app history. Threads reached 100 million sign-ups within five days of launch, surpassing ChatGPT's record for the fastest app to reach 100 million users. The rapid growth was driven by Instagram's massive user base, celebrity endorsements, and the widespread media coverage of the Twitter/X controversies.

However, Threads faced a significant retention challenge after its initial launch. Many users who signed up in the first days did not return regularly, and daily active users declined sharply from the initial peak. This pattern of high initial adoption followed by declining engagement is common for new social platforms, and Meta worked to improve the product to drive retention.

Throughout 2023 and 2024, Meta added features to Threads including a chronological feed option, improved search functionality, a desktop web version, the ability to follow hashtags, and integration with the ActivityPub protocol (making Threads part of the decentralized Fediverse). The ActivityPub integration was significant as it allowed Threads users to interact with users on other decentralized platforms like Mastodon.

By early 2025, Threads had grown to over 300 million monthly active users, establishing itself as a significant player in the social media landscape, though still considerably smaller than X's claimed user base.