Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter alternative saw 100 million sign-ups, but later declined.
Similarweb’s new report reveals a decline in Threads usage, despite impressive initial sign-ups for Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter alternative.
Threads attracted an impressive 5 million registrations within hours and reached 100 million sign-ups within a week of its 5th July launch. However, after three weeks, daily active users declined from a peak of 49 million on 7th July to 12 million on 22nd July, based on Similarweb’s findings. Even on its busiest day, Threads had less than half the daily users of Twitter, which boasts over 100 million active daily users.
Most Twitter users are expected to maintain their regular activity,” said David Carr, Similarweb’s senior insights manager.
Threads, launched by Meta, aimed to exploit Twitter’s turmoil following Elon Musk’s acquisition and dethrone it as the primary text-based social media platform.
Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter experienced staff layoffs and controversial policy changes, resulting in reduced advertising revenue. Recent modifications include limiting non-subscribers’ post visibility and an increase in glitches and offensive speech, causing discontent among long-time users.
Zuckerberg and Meta aimed to capitalize on Twitter users’ discontent and pledged to create Threads as a positive and connected digital town square.
The Meta CEO assured, “We are prioritizing kindness and fostering a friendly environment” on his Threads account.
Despite the promise of a refuge for disenchanted tweeters, Threads has not succeeded in retaining users with the same frequency as Twitter. This could be attributed, in part, to the platform’s lack of certain functionalities present on Twitter, such as a desktop option and the ability to search hashtags, phrases, and names.
