Threads made waves when it first launched last week, amassing over 100 million users since then. It even prompted Twitter Elon Musk to speak out (and potentially sue Meta). While that’s the case, Threads’ user engagement has dropped off a bit since its launch.
The platform is very similar to Twitter; it brings the same mentality, at least. People are able to post their quick thoughts and augment them with images and videos, and GIFs. It doesn’t resemble Twitter; it resembles Twitter before Elon Musk took over. This is one reason why people flocked to the new platform.
But, Threads’ user engagement dropped off a fair bit
Several sources are looking into Threads’ numbers, and they’re reporting a post-honeymoon dip, according to CNBC. Sensor Tower, one of the sources reporting on Threads saw that on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the number of daily active users was down about 20% from Saturday. Also, those who were on the platform spent about half as much time- 10 minutes spent on the app down from 20 minutes.
Another firm, Similarweb, also has analytics; however, these are only for the Android app. Statistics for the iOS app should come soon. Based on the company’s data, Threads had 36.6 million users on Monday.
Similarweb showed that it peaked on July 7th. Between that day and this Monday, Threads lost about 25% of its daily active users. Between July 6th and July 10th, time spent on the app dropped from 20 minutes to about 8 minutes. That’s a 60% drop.
Should Meta be worried?
Meta’s Threads broke records and became the fastest-growing social media platform ever. But now, we’re seeing a pretty notable dropoff. Should the company be worried?
No. It’s natural for a new platform to see a dropoff as time goes on. People spent more time getting used to it and seeing what it’s all about. After time passes, it moves into the back of people’s minds as they go on with their day. This happens to other apps.
We also can’t rule out the fact that some people just found the app is not their thing. There are people who prefer other platforms and uninstalled the app. At this point, there’s still a fair number of things that you can’t do on Threads.
So, this dropoff is just the initial excitement deflating. After a few weeks, we might get an idea of the average user engagement that Threads is going to see over the following years. As time goes on, Threads will see peaks and drops in its numbers as Meta adds more features.