Meta’s new text-based social app Threads has quickly gained 100 million users since launching last week, which appears to be negatively impacting traffic on Twitter. According to web analytics, Twitter traffic declined 5-11% over the first two days Threads was available compared to the previous week. Threads was able to grow rapidly by allowing users to sign up with their existing Instagram accounts and bring over some of their followers. However, Threads has not yet launched in Europe due to regulatory issues. The fast growth of Threads may solidify its position as a real competitor to Twitter, which has over 238 million daily active users.
This is not true. Each Instagram account has the ability to log into Threads. But it’s opt-in. If you don’t want to use Threads then don’t sign up for it. Meta is not duplicating Instagram accounts automatically into Threads.
And yes, you can’t delete your Threads account since it is your Instagram account. Threads is more a feature flag that they turn on/off on your IG account. I agree that they should make it possible to turn that feature off in the future.
I think it should be two different accounts all together. Opting-out on Threads should be as easy as opting-in.
But are you sure about opt-in? I heard people saying that they see users in ‘suggested followings’ section, which have an Instagram account but not a Threads account. But yet listed as suggested on Threads.
I don’t think it should be two accounts because that will break interoperability between Threads and Instagram. But having said that I agree that you should be able to disable/opt-out Threads with your IG account.
When you first sign up into Threads it will ask you if you want to follow everyone you follow on Instagram. This will allow you to follow people that are already on Threads and it will automatically follow the people that will sign up for Threads later. But you can’t tag people that haven’t signed up for Threads yet. So it’s definitely opt-in but it has a discoverability mechanic built in to make it easier for you to find people + potentially follow people that may sign up in the future.