Meta’s Threads has emerged as the first real threat to Elon Musk-owned Twitter as it racked up more than 30 million sign-ups in less than 24 hours of launch, seeking to take advantage of its rival's much-weakened state after a series of chaotic decisions that have alienated both users and advertisers.

The flock to the new app, billed as the text version of Facebook parent’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, marks a sign that users are looking for an alternative to the social media platform that has undergone a series of unpopular changes since Musk bought it last year.

And with Meta already having more than 2 billion Instagram users who can directly link their accounts to it, Threads’ user base is expected to grow even faster.

With its simple black and white feed, and features that let users reply, love, quote and comment on other people’s "threads," the similarities between Threads and Twitter are obvious.

The question now is: Will Threads be the one that finally unseats Twitter?

According to analysts and industry experts, Threads is a legitimate rival and could quickly become a major threat to Twitter.

They say this could happen thanks to its easy access to billions of Instagram users, a similar interface to that of its rival and the advertising heft of the social media giant.

Dubbed as the "Twitter Killer," Threads was the top free app on Apple's App Store in the U.K. and the U.S. on Thursday, with celebrities from Kim Kardashian to Gordon Ramsay joining the app.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday said that 30 million people had registered for the app, including 10 million in the first seven hours of its launch Wednesday.

Its arrival comes after Zuckerberg and Musk have traded barbs for months, even threatening to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas.

"The cage match has started, and Zuckerberg delivered a major blow. In many ways, it's exactly what you'd expect from Meta: Stellar execution and an easy-to-navigate user interface," Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said.

"Whether planned or not, Meta's release of Threads came at the perfect time to give it a fighting chance to unseat Twitter," said Niklas Myhr, a professor of marketing at Chapman University, referring to the turmoil at Twitter after it limited the number of tweets users can see.

"Threads will be off to a running start as it is built upon the Instagram platform with its massive user base and if users adopt Threads, advertisers will be following closely behind."

Meta says Threads provides "a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations."

Instagram users can log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app, giving Threads users a ready-made audience and an edge over other Twitter challengers like Bluesky and Mastodon.

Twitter, by comparison, had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Musk's buyout of the social media platform.

Mastodon has 1.7 million monthly active users, according to its website, while Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky has about 265,000 users.

Some analysts said Threads was reminiscent of Meta's success in integrating crucial features of platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok in the case of Instagram's Stories and Reels, respectively.

At least four brokerages raised their price target on Meta, whose shares have already doubled in value this year.

"No doubt there will be bumps in the road, but Threads could provide support to Meta's share price if it turns out to be a success, as its huge number of initial sign-ups suggests," said Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor.

Available in more than 100 countries, including Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan, Threads was the top free app in Apple's U.S. App Store, while Twitter ranked 26. New arrivals to the platform include celebrities like Oprah, pop star Shakira and chef Gordon Ramsay – as well as corporate accounts from Taco Bell, Netflix, Spotify, the Washington Post and other media outlets.

Threads was also among the trending topics on Twitter where many users shared links to their profiles on the rival app and memes, including Meta's Zuckerberg, who on Wednesday posted on Twitter for the first time since 2012.

Twitter responded on Thursday by threatening to sue Meta, according to the publication Semafor, citing a letter delivered to Zuckerberg by a lawyer for Twitter.

In a letter, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a "copycat" app.

Meta said no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.

In a reply to a tweet about the possibility of legal action against Meta, Musk wrote, "Competition is fine, cheating is not."

Threads, which Meta says provides "a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations," arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Musk’s raucous oversight of the platform. But Meta’s new app has also raised data privacy concerns and is notably unavailable in the European Union.

The launch was clearly a first stab at a service as it lacked the bells and whistles of Twitter.

Threads does not have hashtags and keyword search functions, which means users cannot follow real-time events like on Twitter. It does not yet have a direct messaging function and also lacks a desktop version that certain users, such as business organizations, rely on.

Some users including popular tech reviewer Marques Brownlee also posted about the need for a feed that only consists of the people one follows. Users currently have little control over the main feed.

Overall though, analysts cheered what they said was a strong competitor to Twitter, which has been rocked by abrupt decisions from Musk since he acquired it for $44 billion in 2022. A series of decisions have alienated both users and advertisers, including Musk's latest move to limit the number of tweets users can read per day.

"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," Zuckerberg said on Threads.