Decline in Threads’ User Base

Despite a sharp decline in its user base, Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, has again challenged Twitter, saying that there is a need for a public chat app that attracts a billion users, and that Twitter is not yet up to the task.

Meta-owned social media app Threads has seen its daily active users drop nearly 70% since its peak on July 7, according to news firm Sensor Tower.

Threads has nearly 13 million daily active users, up from 44 million on July 7, according to Sensor Tower, and the average daily time a user spends in the app is four minutes, down from a peak of 19 minutes on launch day.

Comparison with Twitter

This comes after the company said it had registered 100 million registrations within a week of the platform’s July 5 launch.

In comparison, Twitter has about 200 million daily active users and the average time a user spends on the platform is 30 minutes. The two social media platforms operate similarly, but Threads is missing some important features in favor of Twitter, including desktop functionality and the ability to search for topics, not just users.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta executives said they expect usage to decline and are planning new features to keep users on the app.

Threads launched on July 5, allowing users to sign up with their accounts from another social media platform, Meta. With over 2 billion users per month, Instagram’s popularity likely contributed to Threads’ early signups.

Impact on Twitter

In the first two days after the launch of Threads, web traffic on Twitter dropped 5% from the previous week, the paper said.
However, Sensor Tower said it hasn’t seen significant changes in Twitter traffic since Threads launched.

Zuckerberg’s Perspective

For his part, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said that Threads is his company’s attempt to take advantage of market opportunities that Twitter has always enjoyed.

“I think there should be an app for public conversations with over a billion people,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post about his new app.