Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri admits it was 'hugely contentious' to launch Threads as a standalone app. He calls it a 'high-risk' bet.

• Adam Mosseri, Instagram's CEO, said making Threads a separate app is risky, The Verge reports.
• He said Threads as a standalone app will pose a challenge in attracting new users.

Instagram is taking a leap of faith with Threads, its new, wannabe rival to Twitter.

Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, said the company's decision makers were torn over how to design its new social media platform. They considered making Threads part of the platform's feed or a separate tab, but ultimately chose to make it a standalone app.

"It was a hugely contentious debate internally," Mosseri told The Verge in an interview.

The reasoning behind the decision is two-fold, he said: The "post and comment model" of Instagram's feed "just fundamentally does not support public discourse" like Twitter does. And making Threads a separate tab would overcomplicate the platform.

Still, the decision to make a standalone app could be a potential roadblock for Instagram to bring new users to the platform, Mosseri admitted.

"A separate app is way less likely to succeed because you have to bootstrap a user base from very little, or from nothing," Mosseri said. "But if you do it, if you succeed, the upside is so much more significant."

Threads users will have "more space" to use the app to foster public discussion under a standalone structure — and that also ensures that Instagram remains a photo-sharing platform at its core.

"Not everything we do like this is going to work, but we should always be placing a couple of high-risk bets like this if we're going to hope to really evolve forward as fast as I think we need to as a company," he said.

When reached for comment, Christine Pai, an Instagram spokesperson, told Insider that a separate app is necessary to keep Instagram the way it is.

"We've heard feedback that Instagram is a visual sharing product," Pai said. "Threads was built to be a standalone app for text updates and conversations. This separate space allows creators and public figures to share timely updates with text and engage in back-and-forth conversations."

The CEO's thoughts on Threads come as Twitter users become increasingly fed up with the site after the Elon Musk takeover and are now seeking alternative platforms like Mastodon to use instead. That could present an opportunity for Threads to grow its user base.

"Just the volatility and the unpredictability of what seemed to be going on there seemed like it might present an opportunity," Mosseri told The Verge in regard to Twitter. "If things like stability started to become an issue, or if they changed the product too drastically, those were things that might leave an opening for us in a space that otherwise looked pretty particularly difficult to compete in."

In fact, Threads seems to be making progress in courting new users. As of late Thursday morning — mere hours after the app was launched — Threads has apparently received 30 million sign ups, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Instagram's parent company, wrote in a Threads post.

Still, only time will tell whether Threads will be as successful as Mosseri hopes.

"If we're going to build a separate app, it makes no sense to do it if you're only going to do it for six months or a year," he said. "You have to give it a real run."