Mark Zuckerberg’s new Twitter competitor Threads not only broke sign-up records, but the site seems to be keeping plenty of those users active.
A new data analysis reveals that Threads, which makes up Meta’s Instagram userbase, already has a quarter of Twitter’s weekly active user figures – up from 93 million active users globally in Twitter’s first week to record 353 million.
It’s another win for the site, which amassed more than 150 million global downloads in just six days of launch and has been dubbed a Twitter killer.
Daily, weekly and monthly ‘active users’ is a metric used by internet analytics firms to distinguish between those who actually visit or interact with a given site or app, and those who simply sign-up but have a dormant account.
Threads has already surpassed Twitter’s previous closest US rival, former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social, with the new site now boasting 86 times the weekly active user base of Trump’s conservative microblogging platform.
Threads continues to acquire new users at a record-breaking pace, reaching 150 million global downloads in just six days — 5.5. Times faster than the previous record holder, Pokémon Go. Analysis firm data.ai collected this data from combined iOS and Google Play downloads
The thread reached 10 million users within hours of its launch on 6 July 2023. By the end of its first week online, the microblogging app had amassed 109 million users worldwide
But not all the news was positive for Meta’s new social media network.
The novelty seems to have worn off for some early adopters of the thread: time spent on the platform has dropped by 50 percent in the past week, from 20 minutes of use to just 10 minutes.
And that trend seems to hold true even for the thread’s most famous users. Of the 20 most followed Twitter accounts, only nine have even set up a Thread account, and all nine of those accounts never once bothered to post on the new service.
New data crunching reports have come from app intelligence firm Data.AI and Sensor Tower, CNBC has been told.
According to the app’s Sensor Tower tracking, the thread’s daily active users fell early last week — down about 20 percent on Tuesday and Wednesday from the site’s Saturday high.
To put that in perspective, it didn’t take Twitter a full five years to reach the 75-to-93 million active user range that Threads was already managing.
What’s more, the total worldwide download thread continues to break records for speed and volume.
Thread reached 150 million downloads worldwide 5.5. Times faster than the previous record holder, Niantic’s Pokémon Go, which debuted into a cultural frenzy when it first became available in July 2016.
India now contributes 33 per cent of total thread downloads worldwide, far ahead of distant second Brazil (22 per cent) and third US (16 per cent). India was previously Twitter’s second largest community in terms of monthly active users and total downloads
Threads broke a huge industry record to reach one million users in just a few hours
Of the 20 most-followed Twitter accounts — which include individuals and organizations — only nine have even set up a Thread account. All those nine accounts are not active
In a sign of the global exodus, Twitter saw the most significant volume of defectors in threads from India, which was earlier Twitter’s second largest community in terms of monthly active users and total downloads.
India now contributes 33 percent of total global Thread downloads, far more new users than distant second Brazil with 22 percent of the global total and third-place United States, which contributes 16 percent.
Mexico and Japan also contributed significantly to the thread’s record numbers, contributing 8 percent and 5 percent of total downloads, respectively.
And that momentum is likely to continue as Meta manages to resolve regulatory issues that kept the new app out of the European Union due to privacy concerns and Meta’s troubled history with data collection.
Despite government policies, Europeans are clamoring to jump on Threads, forcing Metakey to identify and block any EU users trying to download and enjoy Threads by obfuscating their EU IP addresses through a virtual private network (VPN).
The privacy adjustment is one of many rollouts planned to maintain Meta Thread’s historic momentum
Just a few days ago, Threads released its first major update, expanding the app’s compatibility with Apple’s iOS 17, among other tweaks.
Threads is also rumored to add an edit button, not unlike Musk’s Twitter; Full support for users managing multiple accounts; And a following feed in the near future.
But perhaps its biggest game-changing move will be Thread’s promised integration with Twitter’s other microblogging rivals, such as Mastodon, which is built on the open, decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub.
Data.ai’s new report is quick to point out that, despite flagging user activity, the rapid growth of threads is historic.
‘While the number of weekly active users of the world’s top social apps ranges from half a billion in their lifecycle,’ according to their Insights report. ‘Thread attracts around 100 million WAU [weekly active users] Unprecedented in this early period.’
The app data firm said Threads hit its current high water mark of nearly 93 million active users worldwide on July 10 ahead of Meta’s official announcement that the new social platform had hit the 100 million signup milestone.
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