Threads App: The rise and ‘fall’ of Threads: Why the initial rush died down, what the X rival needs to do

In July, Instagram’s answer to Twitter arrived in the form of the Threads app. The initial days were quite a whirlwind as Threads became the fastest app ever to get to the 100 million users mark. There was quite a bit of buzz around Threads as Twitter became X and there was some chaos on the Elon Musk-led platform. However, it looks like the initial excitement has completely fizzled down as users don’t seem to be spending too much time on Threads. According to a blog post by analytics firm Similar Web, Threads app usage is down by 79%. “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. However, the boom in active users of Threads didn’t last,” noted the firm.

The numbers don’t look good

According to the firm, the Threads app on Android peaked at 49.3 million daily active users worldwide on July 7. However, on August 7, the app was down to 10.3 million daily active users.
In the US, peak usage for Threads was 2.3 million daily active users on July 7, compared with about 576,000 as of August 7. The average amount of time daily active users spent with the app started out at about 14 minutes, worldwide, but was significantly higher in the US: nearly 21 minutes on July 7. By August 7, that was down to 3 minutes, according to Similar Web’s data estimates.
X, on the other hand, seems to be doing quite well. X saw 100 million daily active users on Android alone, and they consistently spend about 25 minutes per day on it, as per the data.

What Threads needs to do

According to Similar Web, Threads is also missing much of the intriguing content that keeps X (Twitter) users coming back. It is something that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, has also acknowledged. He said during the company’s investors call last month that Threads needs to build an experience. “It’s got to be something that people like so it has to have product market fit. Once you get that, it’s not always retentive. So a lot of people might like an experience but you need to kind of tune it so that way the numbers work so that people who use it are continuing.