Threads, Meta’s new social media platform, broke records as the fastest-growing app ever, receiving 100 million user account openings in under a week. However, data shows that the number of active users on Meta’s new app dropped steeply following its launch.
Active users fell by 25.4 million to 23.6 million, according to data by web analytics company SimilarWeb.
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Threads’ usage in the US, which received the highest levels of activity partly due to its ban in the EU, peaked at around 21 minutes of engagement on the 7th of July, a week later it was down to little over 6 minutes.
A similar downturn in engagement was seen in the UK, with the app attracting comparable numbers of searches on the UK app store to that of Twitter’s daily traffic on its launch day.
Thread’s app impressions in the UK rose slightly over the same week but have declined ever since, according to data by app industry analysis service Applyzer.
Mike Rhodes CEO of Applyzer & ConsultMyApp, told Verdict that the apparent drop in the platform’s adoption and retention rates are due its absence of a unique selling proposition rendering the app’s content repetitive,
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By GlobalDataAccording to Rhodes, Thread’s content is largely recycled from Twitter: “Insta users adopt it with the sole purpose of reposting what they’re already sharing on Twitter, which will kill the platform eventually as it will lack original content,”
“Users are wrestling with the effort of maintaining yet another social media platform,” he added.
However, Threads is attracting new users to its Instagram client base, as consumers must first set up an account with Meta’s image-sharing social media app.
Rhodes points out that if the app is going to do well in the long term, it will need to do more than offer more than what is available on Twitter, saying that the original hype is partly down to Mark Zuckerberg releasing it.
Rodes said that if Meta does not go further to retain users outside its Instagram “walled garden,” he believes once the initial hype settles down, the app will at best exist as a small add-on to Instagram and at worst become a “distant memory”.
