Zuckerberg’s Twitter Rival Fizzles Out

After an initial explosion of signups and engagement, Meta’s Threads app has largely stalled.

The app was both lauded and mocked as a “woke” alternative to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which was recently rebranded to X.

Liberal and less politically inclined web users were encouraged to flock to Threads, which was touted as a pro-moderation, friendly place to post text-based content.

Celebrities and influencers joined the platform along with hundreds of millions of users who signed up within the first few days after launch, but enthusiasm tanked after its first week.

According to an analysis of the platform by Similarweb, a digital data analytics company, daily active users on Threads peaked at roughly 26.7 million in the week after its July 5th launch.

But that number dropped to about 13.5 million active users by the end of the month.

High-profile users, like Jennifer Lopez and popular YouTube star Mr. Beast, stopped posting on the platform altogether before the end of its first month.

Matt Navara, a social media consultant who was among the loudest in seeking an alternative to Musk’s Twitter, said the platform is lacking crucial features as well as a central selling point.

“What’s the ‘why am I here’ for Threads?” he asked. “What’s the draw?”

He pointed to a lack of the ability to search for posts as well as a trending topic tracker as major features missing from the Twitter-clone.

It also has no monetization potential for creators, which X has recently implemented to great success.

Meta said the company is working on new features for Threads.

“It’ll take time to stabilize, but once we nail that then we’ll focus on growing the community,” the Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We’ve run this playbook many times (FB, IG, Stories, Reels, etc) and I’m confident Threads is on a good path too.”

Until then, users are returning to X in droves.

Musk claimed at the end of July that X users reached a new high this year.