No comparison to Facebook yet
X’s competitor Threads attracts millions of users
February 2, 2024, 9:27 a.m
Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
There are now 130 million active users on threads. Meta’s X competitor has been growing continuously since its European launch. Compared to Facebook, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Zuckerberg sees significantly more potential.
Threads, the Facebook group Meta’s alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter successor X, now has 130 million monthly active users. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg named the number when presenting business figures on Thursday. Threads gained around 30 million users within three months. Meta launched the service in the EU in December after months of delays.
Zuckerberg had always said that he saw the potential for more than a billion users on Threads. He emphasized that the app is now being used more than during the initial short-term push to launch it last summer. Compared to other meta services, Threads is still small. Facebook now has 3.07 billion monthly active users. Every month, 3.98 billion users access at least one app from the group, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, among others. Threads is docked to Meta’s photo and video service Instagram and can therefore rely on existing connections between hundreds of millions of users.
X loses users
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said last year that it remains to be seen whether Threads will be a direct replacement for Twitter’s role as the place to feel the pulse of the world. Meta itself appeared confident of victory over According to market researchers, since Musk bought the short message service Twitter and renamed it X, the number of users of the online platform has been falling.
Recently, the departure of large advertising customers has also accelerated. On the one hand, the trigger was that Musk supported a post that contained an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Almost at the same time, hate speech researchers demonstrated how advertising from well-known brands could be displayed next to Nazi posts. X claimed that the researchers manipulated the platform to achieve their desired outcome. He later apologized and also visited the memorial site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp.