Billionaire founder of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has said that Threads, the social networking app competing with X(formerly Twitter), has surpassed 150 million monthly active users, up from 130 million in February.
This growth indicates a stable trajectory for the platform. Speaking on Wednesday, April 24, during Meta’s Q1 2024 earnings call, Zuckerberg said, “Threads is growing well too. There are now more than 150M monthly activities, and it continues to generally be on the trajectory I hoped to see. My daughters would want me to mention that Taylor Swift is now on Threads — that was a big deal in my house.”
In recent months, Threads has made strides towards integration with ActivityPub, a decentralized protocol powering network like Mastodon.
In March, the platform enabled U.S.-based users over 18 years old to link their accounts to the Fediverse, allowing their posts to be visible on other servers.
Moreover, Meta plans to release Threads’ API to a broader set of developers by June, granting them the opportunity to create experiences around the social network. However, it remains unclear whether Threads will permit developers to develop fully-fledged third-party clients.
Notably, Meta recently launched its AI chatbot across Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, excluding Threads. This omission might be due to Threads’ lack of native direct messaging functionality.
In another development, Threads introduced a test feature enabling users to automatically archive their posts after a defined period. Users can also individually archive or unarchive posts and choose whether to make them public.
Despite being relatively young at around nine months old, Threads has steadily expanded its user base under Meta’s stewardship.
Backstory
Launched on June 5 last year, Meta Threads positioned itself as a “text-based conversation app” enabling users to share messages up to 500 characters in length, along with links, photos, and videos.
The app garnered significant attention at its inception, with over 10 million users joining from the start. Additionally, it swiftly amassed 1 million downloads on the Google PlayStore within a single day of its release. The buzz around Threads was palpable, with many eager to sign up, drawn by its unique features distinguishing it from Twitter.
However, despite its promising start and initial surge in sign-ups, Threads faced a notable decline in active users shortly after its launch. While it attracted over 100 million users within the first five days, more than half of them eventually ceased using the app actively. Third-party data from SimilarWeb revealed a sharp decrease in daily active users on Android.
For instance, the number plummeted from 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14 and further dwindled to 12.6 million by July 23. This decline in active usage indicated a significant challenge for Threads to maintain user engagement and retention over time.
