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Meta has reported that Threads, its Twitter-like social app, which Mark Zuckerberg launched, has now surpassed 150 million monthly active users.
Threads was founded in July of last year with the claimed goal of creating a more “positive and creative space” for people to share their ideas.
Twitter, of course, served as the inspiration.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that his vision for Threads is to give a “public conversations app that’s a bit more positive,” in comparison to what Twitter has become and what X is currently.
So it’s not a direct challenge to Elon Musk. However, it is also somewhat true.
This appears to be resonating with an increasing number of people over time. Threads surpassed 130 million monthly actives in February and has added 20 million in the last two months.
This is not good news for Musk’s X venture.
Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerburg
While Elon and Co. continue to share ambiguous stats implying that X usage is increasing, as well as claiming that more people are turning to the app for “the truth,” away from the media spin, actual usage data reported by both X and third-party analysts shows that X is not growing its audience at all over time.
Last month, X announced that it now serves 250 million daily active users, the same figure it reported in November 2022, just weeks after Musk took over the app. That means that, according to its own data, X has experienced no increase in daily users in 16 months.
Third-party findings, supplied by several independent suppliers, suggest that X has suffered a 13% to 30% decrease in usage over the last year.
Add to this a more recent Apptopia study indicating that Threads now has more daily active users than X in the United States, and it’s evident that Meta’s bet on a Twitter alternative is paying off, with huge prospects for revenue expansion.
And it could happen sooner than many people imagined.
Meta had originally stated that it would not consider bringing paid adverts to Threads until it had achieved “hundreds of millions” of users.
However, Digiday recently revealed that Meta ad executives are already alerting brand partners that ads may be arriving to the app in the second half of the year.
Based on its growth trend, It’s believed both claims could be true, as Threads is expected to surpass 200 million users by October. But a lot more needs to go right for it to happen, and Threads’ ability to continue adding 10 million new users every month appears dubious unless it comes up with some substantial incentives to entice them.
And the Threads team is working on it.
They’ve been working with influencers to establish new partnerships, while they’re also looking to provide more incentives for sports communities, a key holdout on X, to merge across to the new app.
They recently scored a significant win when Taylor Swift posted her first Thread to promote her new album, and little, steady movements like these might see Threads surpass X as the preferred real-time social media platform.
Alternatively, the Threads team might simply wait for Elon to continue alienating users of the previous Bird app.
That could be the ideal growth plan for Threads, given Musk’s contentious political beliefs and platform upgrades, which are driving more and more users away from the app. Which Threads can then take up, adding to its core audience, and perhaps, over time, simply being similar to Twitter will win out in this regard.
But it isn’t there yet.
It’s worth noting that Threads has 150 million monthly active users. X boasts 250 million daily active users, with over 500 million monthly logins. So Threads still has a long way to go, but it’s gaining traction and has considerably more momentum than X, at least for now.
Meta’s decision to exclude politics and real-time news in the app appears to be a potential hindrance, but Threads is obviously gaining traction, and if more communities become more active in the app, it may eventually reach a tipping point and overcome the incumbent.
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