Is Meta’s Threads Becoming A Threat For X?

Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday boasted the success of Meta’s new social media platform Threads. The billionaire posted “What a year!” on the platform as its monthly user activity goes over 175 million. Threads turn 1 on Friday and this is indeed a big milestone for the entire Meta team. 

Threads on steady rise

Meta’s newest app Threads has been on a constant rise and how. It was launched on July 5, 2023, and it has already garnered a solid 175M MAU in under a year. Instagram users, out of the blue got a surprise invitation to try the new public conversation app Threads and it reached 100 million users in just 5 days. 

However, the initial surge of registered users slowly faded but the number of downloads each month is still pretty high. One of the reasons is that users find it easier to set up a profile on Threads since it fetches data from existing Meta accounts. 

Threads had seen 150 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2024 and numbers quickly got to above 175 in the last quarter. 

The app has also launched an Application Programming Interface last month. The fact-checking program, on the other hand, has been active for the last two months to flush out false content on the platform. 

Numbers tell the whole story?

Meta has opted for different metrics to find the correct number of users and their activity hours for Threads. Earlier it announced plans for open, interoperable social networks to link the platform transparently with other networks. 

The newest microblogging app will be available on Mastodon to gain access to the ActivityPub protocol. However, the monthly active user count does not necessarily tell us the whole story. 

As of now, Zuckerberg has not revealed other metrics like the number of daily active users. The MAU might give us a hint of Threads’ rising popularity but it still doesn’t tell the average time spent by each user. 

Marks’ Threads vs. Elon’s X

Threads was launched in a hurry to compete against X which was taken over by Elon Musk in 2022. The Tesla CEO’s announcement to limit the number of posts by non-subscribers was a key factor for Threads to lure users. 

X, formerly Twitter is still an immensely popular app all over the world whereas Threads has been able to reach only 100 countries so far. The number of downloads and the monthly active users are showing a gradual rise for the new app but it's still nowhere close to X. 

Last month’s presidential debate between Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump had a total of 76 billion user-seconds on X according to a post from Musk himself. Although the app has gone private and does not reveal the key metrics for the public anymore, it is easy to understand that Threads are yet to reach that level. 

Only time will tell whether Zuckerberg’s new app will be able to surpass X and take the throne alongside the likes of Facebook and YouTube.