Meta Threads loses steam, witnesses drop in active users

San Francisco: Meta's Twitter rival app Threads has been reportedly witnessing a significant decline in its daily active users globally.

After peaking at around 50,000 daily active users on Android devices in early July, the app's user base now stands at 10 million, less than a tenth of Twitter's (now X) usership.

Threads had a huge launch at the beginning of July, fuelled by the near-instant onboarding of Instagram users to the new text-based social app. But the initial rush of excitement did not last long.

Within seven hours of the app launch on July 5, over 10 million people joined Threads, making it the most downloaded non-game app on its first day in a decade.

However, the report showed that the users on Threads spend just 2.4 minutes a day on the app, down over 80 percent from its early July peak.

Numerous celebrities and regular users have stopped posting on the app, and analysts believe it lacks cultural relevance and core communities to keep people engaged.

“The app’s active user count boomed in the first couple of days when new users were busy checking out the app and seeing who else was on it, but that faded fast,” analytics firm Similarweb noted.

Kevin Driscoll, associate professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia said, “When I open it, I see a lot of very generic content that seems to be coming from a team of brand managers or public figures,”

“As opposed to what made Twitter feel exciting and compelling in its heyday, which was a more direct conversation and live responses to things that were unfolding,” he added.

Threads made it incredibly simple for new users to sign up when it first launched. Many users didn't even need to create a new, separate account as they could simply import their Instagram information, and their Threads feed would fill up with familiar faces right away.

After the novelty factor ended, it became difficult to persuade people to open another app on their devices. It didn't help that Threads began as a mobile-only app with no desktop counterpart, the report said.

Meanwhile, Meta has announced new features to Threads, including the ability to directly share posts in Instagram direct messages (DMs), a mention button, and more.

With inputs from IANS