Meta’s Threads Catapults App Of Same Name To Top Of App Store Charts
At the beginning of the month, Meta officially launched its Twitter-killer application: Threads. Since then, the social media platform has become the fastest-growing network online, garnering 10 million users in the first seven hours, 30 million in a day, and 100 million in its first week.
As everyone scurries to link their Instagram accounts to the latest site in Meta’s portfolio, there’s been an unexpected side effect on app store charts across the globe. Turns out, an application of the same name—Threads—has been catapulted to the top with downloads by confused users.
Unlike the Twitter alternative, this Threads, created by the Threads Group Inc, isn’t affiliated with Instagram. Instead, it’s positioned as a competitor to Slack and has been available since 2019. Just between July 6 and July 12 alone, however, it’s seen an unexpected 880,000 downloads, as per numbers shared by data.ai.
According to Engadget, the similarly-named application rose to 52nd on the global App Store charts, while in European Union countries—which have yet to be granted access to Meta’s Threads due to regulatory issues—it even surfaced in the top 10.
Naturally, due to the confusion between threads.com and threads.net (Meta’s site), the former has reported a “significant” increase in traffic to its webpage. So much so that the company had to add a badge informing it’s “not associated with Instagram.”
On the Apple App Store, a note on the preview page of the program states a similar declaration, reminding users that this particular Threads application is “not affiliated with Instagram” in hopes of minimizing confusion. There’s even a third ‘Threads’ that’s a shopping platform in the UK.
As TechCrunch pointed out, this isn’t the only time when technology companies have shared names. One such example is Lightyear, which belongs to two UK-based financial technology firms, a Dutch electric vehicle startup, and a New York-based telecommunications service.
— threads (@Threads) July 7, 2023
[via Engadget and TechCrunch, images via various sources]
