Meta’s management was probably surprised by how popular the company’s new social platform, Threads, which launched on July 5th, is like the Twitter Open Challenge. According to Adam Mosseri, the director in charge of the app it’s based on, Instagram, eerily similar to Twitter, the platform “wasn’t necessarily built to replace” already several million users in a few hours, reached a user base of fifty million on day two, and then quickly passed the hundred million milestone.
Mark Zuckerberg’s platform beat the previous record holder, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which, despite huge AI hype, needed two months to reach the milestone. In addition, the platform has not yet appeared in the European Union, where, based on growth to date, by a conservative estimate, an additional user base of tens of millions can (or should not) be expected.
Not an area for a Scrum Master
The big hype about the quick turnaround has died down. In a recent kraftie broadcast, we investigated whether it’s worth managing an IT career these days.
Although the strong opening suggests the new competitor could overtake Twitter within months, the joy is premature. According to data analytics firm Likeweb, the number of daily active users of threads halved in just one week, from 49 million to 23.6 million.
Threads’ strongest day was July 7th, two days after launch, and since then, the number of people actively using the platform on a daily basis has steadily decreased. Additionally, daily usage dropped from an average of 21 minutes on July 7 to just 6 minutes a week.
A major contributor to Thread’s early success may have been the ease with which existing Instagram users could create an account, and the number would have been even greater had it been available in the EU. However, several features that have been available on Twitter for years are missing, including emoji, hashtags, and timed feeds, so it can’t offer the competitor’s usual user experience.
