Threads, a Twitter competitor of Meta Platforms, attracted 100 million sign-ups in just five days of launch, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ousting ChatGPT as the fastest-growing website to accomplish the feat.

Since its Wednesday launch, Threads has had record-breaking user growth. With the addition of celebrities, politicians, and other newsmakers, the platform is considered by observers as the first significant competitor to the microblogging service owned by Elon Musk.

In a Threads post announcing the achievement, Zuckerberg stated, “That’s mostly organic demand, and we haven’t even turned on many promotions.” The app reached 100 million users significantly quicker than ChatGPT, which is owned by OpenAI and broke the record for fastest-growing consumer app in history in January, roughly two months after its release, according to a UBS research.

Threads still has to make up some ground. In July of last year, as per the company’s most recent public statement before Musk’s acquisition, Twitter had close to 240 million monetizable daily active users. In response to the introduction of Threads, Twitter issued a legal threat against Meta, claiming that the social media giant had utilised its trade secrets and other sensitive information to create the programme. Legal experts assert that it may be difficult to substantiate the assertion.

Many other social media platforms that have emerged in recent months as users have chafed at Musk’s administration of the service have a striking similarity to Twitter, including Threads. It accepts links, images, and videos of up to five minutes in length, and postings can be up to 500 characters long. Additionally, the app does not yet include a direct messaging feature or a desktop version that some users, such commercial organisations, depend on.

Additionally, it does not yet have hashtags or keyword search features, which restricts its usefulness as a platform for users to follow real-time events like they regularly do on Twitter as well as its attraction to advertisers. However, experts said that Twitter’s unrest, particularly newly enforced restrictions on the quantity of tweets users can view, might benefit Threads in luring users and advertisers.

The Threads app does not now have any advertisements, and according to Zuckerberg, the business won’t consider monetizing until it is obvious how to reach 1 billion users. Adam Mosseri, the president of Instagram, stated last week that Meta was not attempting to take the place of Twitter and that Threads was intended to concentrate on light topics like sports, music, fashion, and design.

He admitted that politics and controversial news will eventually appear on Threads, which would be difficult for the app that bills itself as the “friendly” alternative for online public dialogue.