Almost a year ago, Twitter wasn’t doing very well, and Meta took the opportunity to launch a haphazard copy of Threads, which at the end of the day didn’t seem to have much of a chance of succeeding Twitter(X).

But after all this time, things seem to be going very well for this alternative. Mark Zuckerberg, who trolled Musk at that launch, stuck his chest out a few hours ago and told us how it was. Threads currently has over 175 million monthly active users. “What a year,” said the Facebook founder. And it certainly looks like it.

Threads’ initial rise was meteoric: it reached 30 million users in just 15 hours, but it reached 100 million users in five days, breaking ChatGPT’s record of reaching that figure in just two months.

Since then, growth has been much slower: in the almost twelve months since this milestone, the company has gained 75 million users, a remarkable figure. In Europe, meanwhile, it was much shorter: it landed on December 14, 2023, and of course Xataka quickly launched its presence on this platform.

This figure is, of course, a far cry from Facebook’s estimated 3 billion monthly users (MAUs), or the estimated 2 billion that both Instagram and WhatsApp have. X/Twitter is still a long way off too: it is currently estimated to have around 620 million active monthly users, according to Statista.

The fine print of Threads’ rise

However, the success of Threads is significant, especially since this social network has grown organically, through word of mouth and the support of some users who got tired of Twitter (or Elon Musk, or both) and decided to try a new alternative. But there are some additional aspects to the silent growth of Threads that need to be interpreted.

First, Meta has not shared its daily active user count (DAU). The company has shared this figure in the past on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, and this This suggests that for now, Threads users are sporadic: They have an account but they barely use it. The difference between MAUs and DAUs is probably important from a service perspective.

There’s another important element to this quiet growth: It’s not been so quiet on Instagram, which continues to be a great promotional channel for Threads, at least. The initial integration of the two (having an IG account almost automatically made it possible to have a Threads account) caused some controversy, and Meta continues to leverage that strong relationship to promote its Twitter rival.

Still, Threads’ growth is remarkable and shows that an alternative to the “magnificent” Twitter is possible. Mastodon tried to offer an additional alternative, but Meta got smart here: Threads were opened up to the federated universe, another point in favor of Twitter non-believers.

The absence of advertising is another important argument for using Threads, which can survive without this income for a long time thanks to Meta’s resources. The Verge states that advertising is planned to be launched in 2024, but there is no certainty in this regard. It seems inevitable that announcements will comebut here Meta takes advantage of being able to afford to lose money easily with Threads.

The same is not true for Musk, who continues to change the model to base (almost) everything on subscriptions, scaring off advertisers. In the meantime, they might welcome a platform like Threads, which is more reputationally “safe.” We’ve seen Twitter openly embrace pornography in recent weeks, for example.

The social network actually seems to be betting on “text mode sharing” on Threads, allowing video and images to be the protagonists on social networks. This is not a bad strategy, and a recent (internal) survey found that new generations seem comfortable on Threads. It will be interesting to see how the competition between Threads and Twitter (X) will develop.

Image | Lucerna3 via Midjourney

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