Threads' big attraction is its link to Instagram, but it is missing most of the app's biggest accounts despite some influencers being given early access

• Meta's Twitter-competitor app, Threads, is strongly linked to Instagram.
• Just six of the 20 most-followed accounts have signed up in the first 12 hours, despite some early-access availability.

Meta is promoting its new app, Threads, with strong links to Instagram — but so far it is missing most of the app's biggest users.

Just six of the top 20 most-followed Instagram accounts have signed up to the Twitter-competitor app so far.

Three of those have the last name Kardashian, and two of them are brands — including Instagram itself.

It also looks like @instagram is the only account to reach 1 million followers on Threads, as of Thursday morning.

That makes sense considering it's also the most-followed account on Instagram with 645 million followers, but the next six-biggest accounts are yet to appear on Threads.

That includes the soccer stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, Selena Gomez, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

And while the three Kardashian sisters are all on the new app, Kylie and Kendall Jenner aren't.

The app has only been live for around 12 hours — its release having been brought forward to Wednesday night from an initial 10 a.m. ET on Thursday — so there will likely be more big users soon.

Although some influencers were given early access to Threads, so they were already signed-up when the app launched.

And while Kim Kardashian has about 300 million more Instagram followers than the YouTuber Mr Beast, he has around 100,000 more Threads followers — suggesting the correlation between the two platforms doesn't necessarily translate to follower count.

If these power users never sign up to Threads, it could limit its marketability. In the App Store, it is being marketed as "Threads, an Instagram app," and users have to use the same account handle for both platforms.

In fact, the connection is so extensive that once you've signed up to Threads, the only way to delete your account is by deleting your whole Instagram profile.

Mark Zuckerberg said 10 million users signed up to Threads in the first seven hours. Compared to Mastodon's 200,000 new users in the week following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, those are strong numbers.

But Zuckerberg is also aiming for it to supersede Twitter and become a billion-user platform. Only time will tell if more of these identifiable names will help Threads really take off.