Threads celebrated its second year of existence over the weekend, and if you logged on, you may have been shown this pop-up notification in your feed:
Yes, a party hat, that you can’t place on your profile image, and just sits as an overlay, no matter where your head is placed in the frame, if indeed it is your head that you’re showing in your Threads profile.
Which, in the age of generative AI that can create videos, and AR features that can distort reality, seems pretty underwhelming. But also, it’s not meant to be some big thing, it’s just a small notifier to mark the event, and celebrate the growth of Meta’s most recent success in social media engagement.
And by any measure, Threads has been a success.
The app reached 100 million sign-ups faster than any other app in history, which you can partly attribute to its linkage to Instagram and streamlined profile creation via your IG info. But even so, it’ll go down as a record either way, while Threads also reached 100 million active users in just a few months.
Threads is now up to 350 million actives, and its growth momentum continues to accelerate, putting it on track to compete with X on total active users.
As you can see in this chart, X still leads the way, at 600 million MAU. But Threads is gaining quickly, and as more community discussion switches to the app, Threads continues to bring more users across to find out what’s happening, across a range of niches.
Threads most recent push on this front has been a re-focus on trending topics, in order to spark more real-time discussion, while it’s also looking to bring more sports discussion to the app, as it takes aim at a key X engagement element.
Meta’s updated approach to political content has been a benefit for the app’s prospects in this respect, and as more users turn away from X, Threads is now best-positioned to gather up those cast-offs, and build new communities around niche interests.
And while X’s continues to publicly claim that it isn’t losing users, its official usage stats, reported as part of its EU obligations, suggest otherwise.
According to its Digital Services Act reporting, X’s EU usage is down 15% since Elon Musk took over at the app. We don’t have the same insight for other markets, but if those trends hold for other regions, X is in significant decline, despite, again, X’s public claims.
The audience leaving X had also been fragmented by other options, with Bluesky emerging as a potential player in the same race. Though more recently, Bluesky has also seen a decline in usage, as the conversation shifts to Threads instead.
That’s not to say that X is dead, and Threads is the place to be, because for many communities, that’s simply not the case as yet. But Threads interaction is rising, and among the three key players in the real-time social space, it is the only one that can currently make that claim.
But can it become the next billion-user app?
That was Mark Zuckerberg’s originally stated vision for the app:
“I’ve thought for a long time that there should be a billion-person public conversations app that’s a bit more positive, and I think that if we keep at this for a few more years then I think we have a good chance of achieving our vision there.”
Is Threads still considered a “more positive” space? Can it continue to accelerate to a billion actives?
I would say that it can, but there’s also a big variance between what can happen and what’ll actually occur.