Threads by Meta has had a very strong start. It reached a total of 100 million account signups in just a few days, and people seemed to welcome the new platform with enthusiasm.
However, a new report has found that its daily active users saw a significant drop of daily active users by half.
According to SimilarWeb, Threads had more than 49 million daily active users on Android worldwide on its best day, July 7. This accounted for approximately 45% of Twitter for Android’s 109 million daily active users on the same day.
Photo/ SimilarWeb
However, by July 14, the number of active users had dropped to 23.6 million, which was only around 22% of Twitter’s audience.
Threads usage has also decreased in the US, where it saw the most activity. On July 7, users engaged with the app for around 21 minutes, but by July 14, the engagement time had dropped to just over 6 minutes.
Photo/ SimilarWeb
The report also discussed that Threads addresses the issue of starting a new online community or what they call “empty party problem” by enabling Instagram users to create one and bring their follower base along.
Threads in its early development still lacks several essential features and needs to provide a convincing incentive for users to switch from Twitter or adopt a new social media habit with Threads, according to the report.
Despite all that, Threads still poses a threat to Twitter’s market share, as evidenced by the 5% drop in web traffic to Twitter’s website and the 4.3% decline in Android app usage during the first two days of Threads’ general availability.
Additionally, while Twitter’s user retention has been on the decline, the loyalty of new Instagram users has remained steady at around 40%. Thus, if Threads succeeds in outdoing Twitter, Instagram’s advantage could be a major factor.
