Threads Are Going Viral

Threads has been available for most people for just over a day. The last friend who just followed me had a number over 58M (you can see the number that someone signed up to threads from their instagram profile).

Wow.

I remember a few months ago when ChatGPT adoption numbers knocked everyone’s socks off with 1 million users in 5 days. In a few more days threads will have over 100M users.

Ironically, I’m going to share a tweet from Justin Kan who is one of the co-founders of Twitch.

Zuck and the team lead by Mosseri at Instagram are outstanding and have probably the best distribution network of any group in human history.

3 BRILLIANT Viral Tactics that Threads Leveraged

1. Displaying how many people signed up to Threads before you on your instagram profile.

   • This shows everyone how much of an early adopter you are. Right now it is a small nod and a bit of clout that encourages quicker adoption so you can get your number.

   • It also signals to everyone how quickly Threads is taking over.

2. Not showing a following count on your Threads profile

   • This encourages you to follow as many people as is interesting rather than any associated ratio perception that is present on other social networks like Instagram, and Twitter.

   • The number of followers you have is still visible

3. Follow all from your instagram account

   • On sign up to threads, the easiest option is to copy all your data from Instagram and follow the same accounts that you are already following. This instantly builds a network.

Bonus:

Word on the street is that Threads launched early to take advantage of the timing in a misstep that Twitter made. Limits.

The power of threads leveraging instagram as the main source of distribution is irrefutable. The volume of signups in such a short amount of time already makes this the most successful launch of any product ever in human history. But it still remains to be seen if threads can find its special retention factor that keeps people checking back multiple times per day.