Twitter rival Threads crosses 10 mn users within hours of launch

More than 10 million people have signed up to Threads, Meta's rival to Twitter, within the first few hours of its launch, the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday. Threads is the biggest challenger yet to Elon Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of social media's most iconic companies, despite its epic struggles. The app went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 2300 GMT on Wednesday, and will run with no ads for now. '10 million sign ups in seven hours,' Zuckerberg wrote on his official Threads account Thursday. Accounts were already active for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets including The Washington Post and The Economist. Zuckerberg spent the first few hours of the platform's launch replying to new users. 'One thing that's up is the number of world champion MMA fighters on Threads, especially now that you're here!' he wrote in a reply to American MMA fighter Jon Jones. 'Round one of this thing is getting off to a good start,' he said in another. Zuckerberg also offered a shot across the bow at Musk -- the pair are known to be bitter rivals, and have even offered to meet each other in a fighting cage to wrestle it out. In his first tweet in over a decade, Zuckerberg posted a Spiderman pointing at Spiderman meme in an apparent reference to the similarity of the two platforms. Back on Threads, he wrote: 'It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will.' Twitter has said it has more than 200 million daily users. - EU 'MANY MONTHS' AWAY - Meta has its legion of critics too, especially in Europe, and despite Instagram's massive user base, they could slow the site's development. The company is criticized mainly for its handling of personal data -- the essential ingredient for targeted ads that help it rake in billions of dollars in profits every quarter. Mosseri said he regretted that the EU launch was delayed, but if Meta had waited for regulatory clarity from Brussels, Threads would remain 'many, many, many, months away.' 'I was worried that our window would close, because timing is important,' he added to Platformer, a tech news site. According to a source close to the matter, Meta was wary of a new law called the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which sets strict rules for the world's 'gatekeeper' internet companies. One rule restricts platforms from transferring personal data between products, as would potentially be the case between Threads and Instagram. Meta was caught out for doing just that after it bought the messaging app WhatsApp, and European regulators will be on high alert to ensure that the company doesn't do so illegally with Threads