Meta's Threads is about to hit 200 million monthly active users (MAUs), chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on July 31, highlighting the rapid growth trajectory of the social app designed to challenge Elon Musk-owned X, previously known as Twitter.
With this, Threads will be doubling its user base from 100 million MAUs as of October 2023. The app now has nearly one-third of X's 600 million user base in just about a year of its launch.
"We're making steady progress towards building what looks like it’s going to be another major social app. We're seeing deeper engagement and I'm quite pleased with the trajectory here," Zuckerberg said during the company's earnings call on July 31.
Meta-owned Instagram launched Threads in July 2023 and achieved 100 million sign-ups in less than five days, making it the fastest-growing consumer product in the world.
After the initial surge, the app's usage significantly declined in the following months due to its lack of many features that are now considered basic on social platforms. This includes keyword search, a fully functional web application, and the ability to support multiple accounts.
However, in subsequent months, Meta went on to quickly add these features to Threads, along with others such as trending topics, a chronological feed, and an edit button for all users at no additional cost.
These changes have resulted in usage and downloads bouncing back on the app. In recent months, Meta has also been promoting posts from Threads on its video and photo-sharing app Instagram, which has also likely fuelled the usage growth on Threads.
In July, ahead of the app's first year anniversary, Zuckerberg stated that Threads has over 175 million MAUs, a jump from over 150 million MAUs in April.
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The Meta chief expects Threads to become the next billion-user social network in its suite of apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. However, he notes that the path to 1 billion people is still 'multiple years' away.
"That's something that is a little bit different about Meta in the way we build consumer products and the business around them than a lot of other companies that ship something and start selling it and making revenue from it immediately... There is a multi-year time horizon between scaling them into not just consumer experiences but very large businesses," Zuckerberg said.
He mentioned that they have been building this company for 20 years and there are "just not that many opportunities that come around to grow a 1 billion person app".
In June, Meta rolled out two major initiatives - Threads API and open social web (fediverse) - as part of the company's efforts to further drive growth of the social platform.
Threads API, launched in June, enables third-party developers, creators, and brands to extend the functionality of the platform by building their own unique integrations, managing their Threads presence at scale, and sharing content with their communities.
This launch came after Twitter (now X) abruptly stopped offering developers free access to its API in February 2023 and introduced new paid APIs at up to $42,000 a month.
It led to many companies, including Microsoft and Sony, pulling back their Twitter/X integrations and some firms even shut down third-party clients over the past year.
Meanwhile, Threads' open social web rollout to over 100 countries in the same month, enables people to share their posts to other federated platforms that are powered by the ActivityPub protocol such as Mastodon.
With this rollout, Threads became Meta's first app to be compatible with rival services, enabling users to interact with a broader community beyond the app's existing user base as well as have the option to transfer their content to another service in the future, thereby giving consumers more control over their data and choose online communities that align with their values.
In May, Threads also rolled out a TweetDeck-like interface with pinned columns to all its web users, in a bid to attract more power users to its platform. This interface lets users pin separate columns for their favourite searches, tags, accounts, saved posts, and notifications.
The social app is also currently testing a similar experience with select users on its iOS app.
Overall, Zuckerberg said that more than 3.2 billion people are using at least one of the company's apps on a daily basis.
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