How a late night call from Zuckerberg to Instagram head Mosseri conceptualised the idea of Threads

Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter last October, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg wanted to launch a product with features that could weaken the dominance of Twitter in the microblogging world.

Zuckerberg's resolve was strengthened when Musk started making wholesale changes at Twitter, from the new CEO to user subscriptions.

Initially, Zuckerberg didn't want to launch a rival app like Threads, but it all started with a call with Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, reports the Washington Post.

While on vacation with his family in Italy, Mosseri received a group call at night from Zuckerberg, who wanted to discuss Twitter-like features in existing apps like Instagram.

But some time into the call, Zuckerberg switched to the idea of creating something 'bigger'. By the time the call ended, it was clear that Zuckerberg had made up his mind to launch a rival app to Twitter.

Mosseri was given the responsibility of building a standalone app.  

"Oh God, we’ve got to figure this out, because [Zuckerberg is] very excited about this," Mosseri was quoted as saying by the Washington Post.

"Sometimes you can tell when he kind of gets his teeth into something."

The responsibility for Mosseri was big; he was to produce an app from scratch in about seven months from the that fateful call with his boss.

He gathered a team of around 60 people and worked hard on an idea of great magnitude.

During the time when the team was preparing the app, Musk was continuously announcing changes in Twitter.

A lot of users were responding with angry messages on Twitter.

The tipping point for most of them came in early July when Musk limited the reach of posts for users without a subscription.

Musk sensed the big business opportunity, and a week before its scheduled date, he launched Threads on July 5.

The unprecedented success of Threads in little time was a shock event to Threads management, reported the Washington Post. Within five days of its launch, Threads had 100 million users.

According to some estimates, it was the most successful social media app launch of all time. 

The early frenzy died down, and the number of daily active users dwindled to 23.6 million after some weeks of its launch, but Threads successfully installed itself as a strong rival to Twitter.

But that happens with most of the products. The next challenge for Zuckerberg can be to retain most of his active users and involve new ones.

But in his address to investors after Meta reported strong earnings last week, Zuckerberg marked Threads as vindication of his 'year of efficiency.'

The late night call to the Instagram boss was indeed a game-changer and quite a reason behind the Meta boss calling Threads vindication.