Tyler Cross
Published on: December 15, 2023

Meta, the parent company behind Facebook and Instagram, released Threads for the EU market. Threads is essentially Meta’s answer to Elon Musk’s company, X. Similar to X, users will be able to post and comment on “threads” that let them interact with popular influencers, fans, icons, and more.

“Today, we’re opening Threads to more countries in Europe. Welcome everyone,” says Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and creator of Facebook.

While Threads launched for the US and some international countries back in July, the app wasn’t actually accessible in the EU until now.

Since its launch, Threads has seen a dramatic falloff in use. After over 100 million users subscribed to try it out, the overall app usage is down 79% since launch. On top of that, numerous researchers have criticized Threads for having extremely poor user privacy protection.

The launch in the EU should certainly spark another initial boom of new users. That said, we’ll have to wait and see if the user base falls off as dramatically as its initial launch after a few months.

So far, while Threads has certainly proven it’s a competitor in the market, it hasn’t garnered a large enough use base to be a complete substitute for X.

To be fair, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has stated in the past that Threads isn’t meant to be a replacement for Twitter (Now X). It was instead meant to be a “public square” for users who wanted to engage in a “less angry” environment.

Elon Musk has responded with hostility towards Threads — Musk threatened to sue Meta on the grounds of “systemic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter trade secrets and intellectual property.”

While the result of the lawsuit is a long way off, many users who originally left X for Threads have already returned. Meta is hoping the EU launch doesn’t follow the same cycle.