Threads, the Twitter rival that branched off from Meta’s Instagram, launched on July 5, 2023. In the year since, the budding social network has grown to 175 million monthly active users. This news was posted by Mark Zuckerberg himself (on Threads, of course).

Initially, Threads grew at a head-spinning pace, reaching 100 million users just 5 days after launch. Things have calmed down since then, but the network keeps growing – it reported 130 million users in February and 150 million in April.

The Threads team is having a quiet celebration of the 175 million milestone with new custom icons. The mobile app was updated to give users a choice of 5 icons (in addition to the default one). More new icons will be added, one each day. You will find them in the Your Profile tab in the app (tap the birthday cake icon). Note that these custom icons are available only for a very limited time and you should pick one by July 12.

The Threads network is interconnected with the rest of Meta’s empire. As of June 25, users in more than 100 countries can enable sharing of their posts to the fediverse at large.

Instagram reports that 63% of all posts on Threads are text-only. That said, 1 in 4 posts on the network contain at least one photo. Besides text and photos, voice notes are becoming more common on Threads, though younger people are more likely to use them than those from older generations. Check out Instagram’s post about curious results from a survey among 2,000 users ranging from Gen Z to Boomers.