Arab users flock to Meta's Threads as it takes on Twitter

Salim A. Essaid

Jul 7, 2023

This photo illustration created in Washington, DC, on July 6, 2023, shows an image of Elon Musk reflected in the opening page of Threads, an Instagram app. Twitter threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk. In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on July 6, 2023, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of "unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade s — This photo illustration created in Washington, DC, on July 6, 2023, shows an image of Elon Musk reflected in the opening page of Threads, an Instagram app. — STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

DUBAI — Instagram released its new text-sharing application, Threads, Wednesday. It's positioned to overtake a spiraling Twitter and users from the Middle East are joining, asking hard questions and chiming in on the battle of the brands.

Instagram is looking to convert its billions of users to Threads and the Middle East region is a key market for the platform.

Three countries in the Middle East and North Africa can be found in Instagram's top 20 largest national markets last year, according to the University of Oregon's report "Social Media in the Middle East 2022: A Year in Review." Turkey was Instagram's fifth largest market globally with nearly 49 million users, representing more than seven out of 10 people, according to the report.

Egypt ranked 19th with 15.4 million Instagram users and Iraq followed with 14 million users, thanks to the countries' large populations.