Threads, US billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s response to Twitter, is losing its shine after a promising start; users are leaving the new platform in droves, it seems.
When Threads launched at the beginning of July, the number of initial sign-ups hit 100 million users in just five days.
New data from SimilarWeb, a software company that analyses online traffic, shows that the figures are no longer so rosy for Threads. In less than two weeks following the launch, Meta’s latest app went from having 49 million daily users to 23.6 million. A week later, Threads had 12.6 million daily accounts remaining.
The drop-off has occurred before the Meta app has even launched in the European Union. In the past, Zuckerberg’s company has been forced to pay huge fines to the EU and it wants to avoid having to pay more and so is hanging back on opening up in the bloc.
Meta and Zuckerberg are not worried, they say. During an online conference on the latest quarterly results, Threads was discussed positively. The company had anticipated a drop and was pleasantly surprised by the number of users who are still returning daily, it was said.
“If you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally, it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” Zuckerberg said.
When it was launched, Threads received criticism for what many felt was its limited functionality.
Additional features are still to come, such as a desktop version and a search function, which users are accustomed to on similar platforms, according to the company. Such adjustments are intended to help stabilise user numbers, while closer integration with Meta-owned Instagram is also a possibility.
The apparently negative numbers for Threads come at a time when Meta has made substantial investments in the so-called Metaverse via its Reality Labs division, which produces VR headsets and other products. In the first three months of 2023, Meta suffered a $4 billion loss regarding Metaverse.
Meanwhile, fellow US billionaire and Twitter CEO Elon Musk is said to be pleased with the results of his own platform, which he has recently rebranded as X after acquiring it at the end of 2022.
“Monthly users have reached a new high,” he stated on his Twitter account on July 28, sharing a graph showing a final count of more than 540 million users. As of May 2022, Twitter had 229 million monthly active users, according to a statement made before Musk’s acquisition.
New features such as ad-revenue sharing are also working, financially rewarding content creators on the platform, Twitter said.
𝕏 monthly users reach new high in 2023 pic.twitter.com/trqLGBEvvA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2023
Create anything! https://t.co/FxxcCzYb4q
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2023
