Having reached the milestone of more than 49 million daily users, Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads network has seen a decline of 79% in just 1 month.
According to Similarweb, Threads peaked at over 49 million daily users on July 7. This number dropped to 10 million on August 7.
After the initial spike, Meta’s Threads social network continued to see its user base dwindle. Similarweb says the number of daily visitors and the amount of time spent on the platform have both decreased within just one month.
In the blog post, the company analyzes the number of people using the platform’s Android apps. Using the app is the most reliable way to track traffic on Threads as the website is currently restricted to read-only mode.
After a peak of 49.3 million daily users on July 7, the number dropped 79% to 10.3 million on August 7. In the US alone, the number of daily active users peaked at 2.3 million on July 7, and fell to 576,000 on August 7.
People who are using Threads are also not staying as long as they originally were. The average amount of time per day spent using the application from Meta is about 14 minutes, in the US it is almost 21 minutes. By August 7, this number had dropped to just 3 minutes.
Meanwhile, the number of daily active users on X (the social network renamed from Twitter), is more than 100 million, on the Android app alone. And regular users spend up to 25 minutes to use it every day.
With all the trouble and chaos surrounding Twitter since billionaire Elon Musk took over, a number of new social networks have popped up over the past year. All have the goal of providing a Twitter-like experience.
Platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads have tried to resonate by offering similar but healthier alternatives. However, attracting users is only an initial test, retaining them is a much bigger challenge. That’s even more obvious with Threads.
After launching in early July, Threads broke records for being the fastest-growing app ever, gaining over 100 million new users in less than a week. By linking new accounts to the Instagram service, Meta has simplified the sign-up process for the photo-sharing social network’s 1.6 billion existing users. But that mutation quickly evaporated.
By the end of July, the number of Threads users per day had dropped by 70%, according to data from Sensor Tower. The actual user count has dropped to 13 million, while average app minutes are down to 4 minutes from the all-time high of 19 minutes.
There are many reasons why Threads are losing users. It is possible that the application lacks some core features, which are typical for X and other social networks. For now, the entire service is only available as an iPhone and Android app.
Threads’ website allows reading but not writing, even the reading process is very stub. Users cannot search for posts nor edit their own posts.
Meta has promised web browser accessibility, an edit button, and other improvements. However, the implementation of new features is still slow, which can make users accustomed to a more feature-rich platform frustrating.
post The Similarweb says Threads still has a chance to become a better version of Twitter, but needs to give users more reasons to keep coming back
