Zuckerberg's Attempt to Take Down Musk's Twitter Is Tanking Further and Further Each Day, Data Shows
Threads is unraveling, according to a new report.
Although Meta’s social media rival to Elon Musk’s Twitter platform arrived to vast publicity in early July, the chart of engagement since then has been heading in one direction — down, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Using data supplied by the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the Journal reported that the number of daily active users on Threads is about 13 million, a drop of about 70 percent from July 7, when the app, which is offered as an added feature to Instagram users, had more than 40 million daily users.
When users sign on, if they sign on, they don’t stay long.
Sensor Tower data said that across iOS and Android apps, use is now about four minutes, well down from 19 minutes.
Twitter has about 200 million daily active users who spend an average of 30 minutes on the platform, according to Sensor Tower.
SimilarWeb, a digital data and analytics firm, offered slightly different data but the same conclusions, saying Android users on Threads spent 21 minutes on the app when it launched, but only five minutes now.
“Threads is missing many basic features and still needs to offer a compelling reason to switch from Twitter or start a new social media habit with Threads,” the group wrote, according to Fortune.
Others also see the declines as trouble signs.
“It’s clear by the drop-off that people are seeing they can’t do as much, and there are certain things that they want to be able to do that perhaps they can do on other apps,” Richard Hanna, a professor at Babson College who studies social-media strategy and digital marketing, said, according to the Journal.
The solution, he said, is for Meta to increase what Threads users can do with the new platform.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is upbeat despite the numbers, according to CNN.
“I’m very optimistic about how the Threads community is coming together,” he said in a Monday post on Threads.
“Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily … The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention,” he wrote.
Adam Mosseri , who leads Meta’s Instagram unit, said the company’s “focus right now is not engagement, which has been amazing, but getting past the initial peak and trough we see with every new product, and building new features, dialing in performance, and improving ranking,” according to the Journal.
One expert said Meta has the resources to overcome hiccups and grow the platform.
“Meta definitely has the patience, they have the money, and they have the engineering talent,” Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, a market research firm, said.
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