Meta's Threads had a moment in which it seemed it would overtake Twitter in a matter of months, but it may not end up being that easy.
According to data analytics company Similarweb, the number of daily active users on Threads dropped from 49 million to 23.6 million in just a week.
Threads' best day was July 7, just two days after launch, but the number of daily active users steadily declined from there. Total daily minutes of use — a different metric that looks at how much time users are spending with the app — has also fallen from 21 minutes on July 7 to just over 6 minutes on July 14, Similarweb claims.
Threads had a massive surge of users shortly after launch, having reached 100 million signups on July 10 according to data site Quiver Quantitative (the number has since increased to 114 million). One reason Threads was such a success early on was how easy it was for Instagram users to create an account. The numbers would likely be even bigger if Threads were available in the European Union.
But Threads still lacks many basic features that Twitter has had for years, including emoji, hashtags, and a chronological feed, all of which are likely making it harder for Twitter users to make the switch.
Good news for Threads is that, according to Similarweb, Twitter's retention of new users is also down, albeit on a longer time scale, having dropped from 19% in May 2022 to 16% in May 2023.
