Published , by Donovan Erskine
Published , by Donovan Erskine
Meta decided to launch Threads, its new Twitter clone, a few hours early yesterday evening. Allowing users to register using their Instagram credentials, the platform quickly amassed over 10 million sign-ups in its first seven hours. Given Meta’s notorious history with aggressive ad implementation, some users have already begun speculating when and how the Facebook and Instagram company will start introducing ads to its new social media app, but Meta says it’s not really worried about that right now.
The quote comes directly from Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, who is also leading the charge on Threads. In response to a post from user pompglobal about how Mark Zuckerberg is “salivating” at the chance to drop ads on the millions of new Threads users, Mosseri stated that getting ads onto Threads is “honestly not the priority right now.” Going on to say that the company is more concerned with making sure Threads is “an app people want to keep using before we worry about making money.”
Post by @mosseri View on Threads
The Zuck himself chimed in as well, stating “our approach will be the same as all our other products: make the product work well first, then see if we can get it on a clear path to 1 billion people, and only then think about monetization at that point.”
It’s an interesting pair of quotes coming from the leadership at Meta, a company notorious for its ruthless ad business. It’s been a key criticism of Facebook and Instagram over the years (alongside some sensible privacy concerns) so we’ll be quite curious to see how the implementation is handled on the new platform. For now, enjoy the rare ad-free social media experience while it lasts. In the meantime, Meta is concerned with addressing a number of requested features and fixes for Threads, including a following tab, hashtags, a proper website, and post searching.