Despite Elon Musk's continued efforts to redefine Twitter, encouraging users to pay for complete app functionality, Meta's competing platform, Threads, appears to have faltered following its launch, according to recent third-party usage statistics.
The figures are hard to ignore. Sensor Tower reveals that Threads' daily active users have plummeted by approximately 70% since its debut, while data.ai indicates a significant slowdown in Threads downloads. Many commentators have already foreseen Meta's real-time news app heading towards failure, despite its impressive achievement of acquiring 100 million members swiftly after launch. Musk's primary advocates have been particularly keen to emphasize the decline of Threads. While it's premature to definitively assess Threads' potential, these statistics do bring up some legitimate apprehensions.
So, does the declining interest in Threads suggest that efforts to establish a presence on the app are futile?
Several critical factors deserve attention. Firstly, Threads is still relatively rudimentary, with restricted functionality and options for posting. A significant new feature will be a 'Following' feed, in contrast to the current AI-recommended 'Home' timeline, which, judging from recent screengrabs of Instagram head Adam Mosseri's posts, is imminent. This feature will allow users to view content exclusively from the profiles they follow, much like Twitter.
While this change may result in reduced post exposure and potentially lower engagement per post, it appears to be a necessary step towards refining the Threads algorithm to better align with user preferences, and ultimately compete with tweets.
The app currently lacks a desktop version and account switching functionality, making it less user-friendly for social media managers. These drawbacks might have contributed to the decline in user numbers, as some users may have chosen to delay their engagement with Threads until these features are incorporated. Once these improvements are in place, Threads might witness a resurgence in popularity.
