ChatGPT's record growth was just beat by a new viral app

ChatGPT established a previously unseen rate of growth at the beginning of 2023, hitting a 100 million user base in just two months. But tech moves fast, and with that user base finally starting to dip, a new viral app has broken its record.

And yes, we’re talking about Threads, the new Twitter competitor from Meta. The new social media app has amassed a whopping 100 million users in just five days since its July 6 inception, according to the data tracking platform Quiver Quantitative.

A series of mobile screenshots showing off the Threads app on a black background. — Threads/Meta

The platform saw 10 million registrations within the first seven hours, 30 million users on its first day, and over 70 million sign-ups the following day, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating that user response to Threads has been, “way beyond our expectations.”

Many have noted that this registration record has quickly succeeded one set by OpenAI’s ChatGPT in January, two months after it opened to the public as a test beta in November 2022. Prior to both milestones, it took tech brands years to achieve 100 million active users. It took Facebook four and a half years to reach 100 million active users.

For ChatGPT, the novel interest in text-to-speech artificial intelligence brought droves of people to sign up for the chatbot that could respond to text prompts as if it were a person on the other end.

With Threads, its parent company Meta benefits from the connection to its sister platform Instagram, which allows you can easily use the login details you already have to create an account. Amid months of issues at the Elon Musk-run Twitter, many have turned to Threads for refuge. The peak has been the social media platform’s chairman limiting the number of tweets registered users can view per day, while unregistered users can no longer access the site at all.

Twitter has also closed free access to its API, which restricts users from downloading massive amounts of posts for sharing elsewhere, under the guise of protecting its intellectual property. This instead broke many of the third-party tools that make the platform run smoothly. Some other major gripes Musk brought on included him making the verified blue check a paid-only option, and the excessive ad placement, which also marred the user experience.

Overall, the early adopted Threads appear to be well-received by users, with only a few complaints that point out the differences between it and Twitter. However, future updates are expected as Threads grows, and features like hashtags have already rolled out.

ChatGPT’s record growth was just dethroned by a new viral app

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