Mark Zuckerberg‘s new Twitter competitor Threads has not only broken records for sign-ups, but the site also appears to be keeping plenty of those users active.
A new data analysis suggests that Threads, which builds off Meta’s Instagram userbase, already has one quarter of Twitter’s weekly active user figures – recording roughly 93 million active users globally in its first week to Twitter’s 353 million.
It is another win for the site, which amassed over 150 million global downloads in just six days after its launch and has been dubbed the Twitter killer.
Daily, weekly and monthly ‘active users’ are a metric used by internet analytics firms to differentiate between the number of people who actually visit or interact with a given site or app and those who simply signed-up but have a dormant account.
Threads has already far 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 gain new users at a record-breaking pace, reaching 150 million global downloads in just six days — 5.5. times faster than the previous recordholder, Pokémon Go. Analysis firm data.ai culled this information from combined iOS and Google Play downloads
Threads reached 10 million users within hours after it was launched on July 6 2023. By the end of its first week online, the microblogging app had amassed 109 million users globally
But the news has not been all positive for Meta’s new social media network.
The novelty does appear to be wearing off for some of Threads’ early adopters: time spent on the platform has been down 50 percent over the past week, from 20 minutes of use to just 10 minutes.
And that trend appears to be true as well for Threads most famous users. Of the 20 most followed Twitter accounts, just nine have also set up a Threads account and not all of those nine accounts have bothered posting to the new service even once.
The new data-crunching reports come from app intelligence firms data.ai and Sensor Tower, as told to CNBC.
According to Sensor Tower’s tracking of the app, Threads’ daily active users declined early last week — down roughly 20 per cent on Tuesday and Wednesday from the site’s Saturday heights.
To put that into perspective, it took Twitter five whole years not mere weeks to get to the 75-to-93 million active users range that Threads is already managing.
What’s more, Threads record of total global downloads continues to break records for speed and volume.
Threads reached 150 million global downloads 5.5. times faster than the previous recordholder, Niantic’s Pokémon Go, which debuted to a cultural frenzy in when it first became available in July 2016.
India has now contributed 33 percent of the global total of Threads downloads, more by far than distant second Brazil (22 percent) and third the US (16 percent). India had previously been Twitter’s second-largest community in terms of monthly active users and total downloads
Threads has smashed huge industry records in reaching a million users in just a few hours
Of the 20 most followed Twitter accounts – which includes people and organizations – just nine have also set up a Threads account. Not all of those nine accounts are active on
In a sign of the global exodus, Twitter has seen the most significant volume of defectors to Threads from India, which has previously been Twitter’s second-largest community in terms of monthly active users and total downloads.
India has now contributed 33 percent of the global total of Threads downloads, more new users by far than distant second Brazil with 22 percent of the global total and third the United States, which contributed 16 percent.
Mexico and Japan have also contributed significantly to Threads’ record numbers, contributing 8 percent and 5 percent of total downloads, respectively.
And this pace is likely to continue as Meta manages to resolve the regulatory snags that have kept the new app out of the European Union due to privacy concerns and and Meta’s troubled history with data collection.
Government policies notwithstanding, Europeans have been clamoring to make the jump to Threads, compelling Meta itself to identify and block any users in the EU attempting to download and enjoy Threads by obscuring their EU IP addresses through a virtual private network (VPN).
Privacy adjustments are just one of the many rollouts Meta has planned to keep Threads’ historic momentum going.
Just a few days ago, Threads released its first major update expanding the app’s compatibility with Apple’s iOS 17, alongside other tweaks.
Threads is also rumored to be adding 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 Threads’ promised integration with Twitter’s other microblogging rivals, like Mastodon, which are built on the open, decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub.
The new report by data.ai was quick to point out that, despite the flagging user activity, the rapid growth of Threads has been historic.
‘While the world’s top social apps have weekly active user counts starting in the half-billion range years into their lifecycles,’ according to their insights report. ‘Threads attracting nearly 100 million WAU [weekly active users] during this early period is unprecedented.’
The app data firm said that Threads hit its current high water mark of approximately 93 million users active around the world just ahead of Meta’s official announcement on July 10 that the new social platform had reached 100 million signups milestone.
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
