Meta officially unveiled Threads, a new app that aims to provide a venue for real-time online chats, a feature that has long been Twitter's main selling point.

As a result of its access to billions of Instagram users and a resemblance to its rival's design, Meta's Threads garnered more than 30 million sign-ups within around 18 hours of its launch and became the first serious threat to Elon Musk-owned Twitter.

Following Musk's $44 billion purchase of the social media site last year, which was followed by a series of erratic actions that alienated both users and advertisers, a number of rivals to Twitter have emerged. Musk's most recent action was restricting how many tweets users may read each day.

Other rivals have had only modest success. According to its website, Mastodon, another program similar to Twitter, has 1.7 million monthly active users, while Bluesky, backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has roughly 265,000.

The appearance and the description of the app appear to be very similar to those of Twitter. The listing, which debuted this week as a teaser, highlights its potential to gain popularity and establish connections with like-minded individuals.

According to the app's description, it serves as a meeting space for groups of people to talk about everything, from current events to popular culture.

A 500 character limit will apply to messages posted to Threads, according to Meta. Through Apple's iOS and Android, the business claimed to be distributing the app to 100 different nations.

Users are prompted to link their Instagram account, edit their profile, and follow the same profiles they already follow on Instagram after downloading the app. With a recognizable layout, text-based feed, and the ability to repost and quote other Thread postings, it has a similar appearance to Twitter.

Furthermore, it allows users to upload posts from Threads directly to Instagram Stories while blending in with Instagram's current design. Accounts on Threads that have been verified on Instagram are likewise verified there. Additionally, thread accounts may be labeled as private or public.

Given Meta's extensive resources and its enormous audience, the new app could represent the biggest danger to Twitter of all its competitors, adding to the growing roster of Twitter rivals.

It also occurs at a time of increased unrest at Twitter, which over the weekend experienced an outage and then announced that it had temporarily set limits on how many tweets its users could view while using the service.