Birth of Threads: Mark Zuckerberg called up Instagram head Adam Mosseri late at night to discuss the 'Twitter-killer'

Threads is pretty young. Even by the standards of the ever-changing world of social media apps. Instagram head Adam Mosseri reveals the story behind how the potential 'Twitter-killer' was created. Mosseri told The Washington Post the story behind the birth of Threads, a micro-blogging app linked to Instagram. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a pivotal role in the birth of the new app.

According to The Washington Post's report, the initial idea was to incorporate several Twitter-like features into Instagram. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives were looking for ways to attract Twitter creators to Instagram. However, Zuckerberg had something more in his mind. He said, “What if we went bigger?”

Mosseri was on vacation with his wife in Italy when Zuckerberg called him. Zuckerberg encouraged him to go bigger. Mosseri recounted talking to Zuckerberg while it was nighttime in Italy. He was speaking softly to avoid disturbing his wife.

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The conversation between the two tech giants proved to be a turning point, leaving Mosseri with a sense of urgency and a mandate to build an entirely new app that could compete directly with Twitter. Reflecting on the call, Mosseri recounted his thoughts at the time, saying, "Oh God, we've got to figure this out because [Zuckerberg is] very excited about this." He added, "Sometimes you can tell when he kind of gets his teeth into something.'

Adam Mosseri then assembled a lean, engineer-heavy team of around 60 people. This team was tasked with building an all-new application within months. Mosseri claimed that it felt more like a start-up than an established tech company. Threads made its debut earlier this month and in a matter of five days, it drew more than 100 million users. However, the app failed to maintain that momentum, losing up to 70 per cent of daily active users since its peak.

New DMs Feature on Threads

During the same interaction with the Post, Mosseri also revealed that Threads will soon introduce direct messaging (DM) feature on the platform. Acknowledging the drawbacks of the app, Mosseri said, "Lots of basics like that really need to get fixed — and fixed quickly."

So far, in terms of the feature list, Threads is mostly trying to play catch-up with Twitter. One of the new features included a Following tab. The follower tab also makes it easier for users to keep track of who has recently followed them.

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