Meta is focused on stealing more market share from X and preparing to turn on ads.
www.theverge.com
Threads hits 175 million users after a year
Meta’s rival to Elon Musk’s X is still growing, just not as quickly. What will the next year hold?
By
Alex Heath, a deputy editor and author of the
Command Linenewsletter. He has over a decade of experience covering the tech industry.
Jul 3, 2024, 10:03 AM EDT
38 Comments
Illustration: The Verge
A year and a half ago, Threads was but a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.
Now, the rival to Elon Musk’s X has reached more than 175 million monthly active users, the Meta CEO
announced on Wednesday.
His announcement comes as Threads is about to hit its one-year anniversary. Back when it
arrived in the App Store on July 5th, 2023, Musk was taking a
wrecking ball to the service formerly called Twitter and goading Zuckerberg into a
literal cage match that never happened. A year later, Threads is still growing at a steady clip — albeit not as quickly
as its huge launch — while Musk hasn’t shared comparable metrics for X since he took over.
The first year of Threads
A line graph showing the growth of Threads user base from Oct 2023 to July 2024.
Chart: The Verge Source: Meta Created with
Datawrapper
As with any social network, and especially for Threads, monthly users only tell part of the growth story. It’s telling that, unlike Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, Meta hasn’t shared daily user numbers yet. That omission suggests Threads is still getting a lot of flyby traffic from people who have yet to become regular users.
I’ve heard from Meta employees in recent months that much of the app’s growth is still coming from it being promoted inside Instagram. Both apps share the same account system, which isn’t expected to change.
Even still, 175 million monthly users for a one-year app is nothing to turn your nose up at, especially given Meta’s spotty track record of launching standalone app experiments over the years. Zuckerberg has
been open to me and others that he thinks Threads
has a real shot at being the company’s next billion-user app. To keep the growth story going, I’m told, Meta is focused on markets where it thinks there’s an opening to take more market share from X — Japan, for example.
For now, Threads is still a loss leader for Meta financially, though it can certainly afford to fund it indefinitely. Internally, I’m told execs are thinking about turning on ads in Threads sometime next year, though the exact plan is still up in the air. It’s easy to see how Threads could plug into Instagram’s existing ads system. And given Meta’s
intentional decision to deprioritize politics and
encourage lighthearted content, it could be a compelling place for advertisers looking for a more brand-safe alternative to X.
“It would be great if it gets really, really big, but I’m actually more interested in if it becomes culturally relevant and if it gets hundreds of millions of users,” the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri,
told me when Threads first launched. A year later, the app definitely has more progress to make on the cultural front. But the fact that it’s still growing means Meta has the runway to make that happen.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25368000/Screenshot_2024_04_02_at_4.06.37_PM.png)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25368000/Screenshot_2024_04_02_at_4.06.37_PM.png "A screenshot of President Biden’s account, as viewed from a Mastodon instance on the web.")
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25367953/IMG_710C15A98018_1.jpeg "A screenshot of the POTUS Threads account from a Mastodon client.")
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25408648/Clipboard_04_19_2024_01.jpg)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25408648/Clipboard_04_19_2024_01.jpg "An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions & sentiments from a fleeting & fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational & sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed & boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.")
, went to threads and they had public search with limitations too
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24774110/STK156_Instagram_threads_1.jpg)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24774110/STK156_Instagram_threads_1.jpg "An image showing the Threads logo")