No one, including the top leadership at Meta, expected Threads to be such a runaway, early success, having now amassed more than 110 million sign-ups in just over a week.

At the opening of Meta’s internal Q&A for employees yesterday (which a source let me tune into), a sizzle reel showed some of the early Threads posts from celebrities and brands, along with a graphic depicting how sign-ups soared to over 70 million in just two days. It was a deserved victory lap for a company that hasn’t launched a successful standalone app from scratch since… forever.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Threads launch, as Instagram chief Adam Mosseri later explained in the meeting, was how it was built. A team of just three product managers, three designers, and “50ish” engineers created and launched it within five months. For Meta and its Big Tech peers, such constraints for a big, splashy bet are unheard of.