Within four hours of launch on Wednesday evening, Meta’s new microblogging platform Threads has more than five million users, according to a “thread” posted by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Politico reports, introducing a new competitor to Elon Musk’s flailing Twitter, Politico reports.

The site allows people to post messages of up to 500 characters, nearly double Twitter’s capacity.  It allows people to like, reply and repost comments, but it does not yet have a hashtag function.  At least initially, you’ll have to have an Instagram account to sign up; the app is a text-based version of the Instagram platform, according to Meta.  Users can set up a placeholder Instagram account to sign up for Meta, if they don’t have one already.

The system is not without problems, however, as the platform was unable to retrieve some messages on demand, although the rollout has been relatively smooth when compared to the Truth Social comical debut.  The launch was originally supposed to happen Thursday at 10 a.m., but the app appeared in the Apple and Google app stores at 7 p.m. Wednesday. 

Threads debuts as Twitter continues to experience unforced errors created after owner Elon Musk first fired significant portions of Twitters workforce–then had to hire them back.  Musk announced new restrictions on users, including limiting the number of tweets users could see each day in an attempt to stop third-party companies from scrapping data from the site.  Although he proclaimed Twitter would be a “free speech” haven, Musk also announced he would suspend any accounts that referred to an individual’s identity as “cis-gender.”