Despite the sharp decline in its users, Mark Zuckerberg challenges Twitter

Meta-owned social media app Threads sees a significant drop in users

Despite the sharp decline in its users, Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta, has once again challenged Twitter, stating that there is a need for an application for public conversations that attracts a billion users and that Twitter has so far failed in this task.

Meta-owned social media app Threads has seen a nearly 70% drop in daily active users since its July 7 peak, according to market news firm Sensor Tower, marring their explosive launch just two weeks ago and pale in comparison to the social media giant’s Twitter glare.

Threads struggles to maintain user engagement

Threads has nearly 13 million daily active users, down from 44 million on July 7, and the average daily time a user spends on the app is four minutes, which is down from its launch day peak of 19 minutes, according to Sensor Tower.

Initial success followed by a decline

This comes after the company reported that it had 100 million signups within a week of the platform launching on July 5.

By comparison, Twitter has around 200 million daily active users, and the average time a user spends on the platform is 30 minutes. The two social media platforms work similarly, but Thread is missing some important features in favor of Twitter, including desktop functionality and the ability to search for topics instead of just users.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta executives said they expect usage to drop and are planning new features to keep users on the app.

Threads launch and impact on Twitter

Threads launched on July 5, allowing users to sign up with their accounts from Meta’s other social media platform. With over 2 billion monthly users, Instagram’s popularity likely helped drive early Threads signups.

During the first two days after the launch of Threads, web traffic to Twitter dropped by 5% compared to the previous week, the newspaper reported.
However, Sensor Tower said it hasn’t seen a major change in Twitter traffic since the launch of Threads.

Zuckerberg’s vision for Threads

For his part, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said that Threads is an attempt by his company to seize opportunities in the market that Twitter has always enjoyed.

“I think there should be an app for public conversations with more than a billion people,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post about his new app.