Meta Platforms Inc.’s freshly launched Threads social network has passed 70 million signups, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg divulged today. 

“70 million sign ups on Threads as of this morning. Way beyond our expectations,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post, or thread, on the new platform. The milestone comes about a day after Threads reached 30 million users and less than three days after it launched.

Threads is a text-centric social network that Meta is positioning as an alternative to Twitter. Users can publish posts, or threads, that may contain up to 500 characters as well as photos and videos. Content from the accounts that a user follows appears in a centralized feed.

Development work on Threads began in January, according to a report published last month. The app was reportedly known as Project 92 and Barcelona internally ahead of its release. Threads officially went online at 7 p.m. EDT Wednesday, about half a day before it was originally scheduled to launch.

Threads was developed by Meta’s Instagram subsidiary and is closely integrated with the latter service. Users can only sign up for the app using their Instagram accounts. Additionally, the two services’ profile deletion options are currently linked, although Meta is working to change the feature.

On Thursday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri told The Verge that Twitter Inc.’s “volatility” and “unpredictability” since its acquisition by Elon Musk created a market opportunity for Meta. Musk’s decision to limit the number of tweets users may view per day reportedly played a role in the decision to launch Threads this week.

Mosseri divulged that Meta plans to roll out support for the ActivityPub protocol to Threads down the road. The protocol enables users of one social network to view content from another without opening a new tab. 

According to Meta, Threads users will in the future receive the ability to interact with content from Mastodon, which already supports ActivityPub. The company hinted that integration with additional ActivityPub-compatible services could be added as well. “Soon, you’ll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon,” states a message in the Threads interface.

Threads is currently available in 100 countries including the U.S., but the app not yet available within the European Union. According to Mosseri, the reason is that Meta has found it challenging to comply with the bloc’s privacy regulation. However, the executive told The Verge that Meta eventually plans to make Threads available in the EU as well.

Image: Meta