Threads App Usage Down 79% After a Month

Even in the US, where engagement was initially higher, time spent with the app is down 85% from the initial buzz of the launch

The initial rush of excitement did not last long for Threads, the Meta Platform’s answer to the app formerly known as Twitter. Threads had a huge launch at the beginning of July, fueled by the near-instant onboarding of Instagram users to the new text-based social app. However, the boom in active users of Threads didn’t last. The app’s active user count boomed in the first couple of days when new users were busy checking out the app and seeing who else was on it, but that faded fast.

We’ve been tracking Threads usage based on estimates for Android, the mobile app platform for which we have the most detailed data. Web usage is not yet a significant part of the Threads story, since so far the Threads website is read-only.

Key takeaways

• The Threads Android app peaked at 49.3 million daily active users worldwide on July 7, according to Similarweb estimates. But on August 7, the app was down to 10.3 million daily active users.
• In the US, peak usage for Threads was 2.3 million daily active users on July 7, compared with about 576,000 as of August 7.
• The average amount of time daily active users spent with the app started out at about 14 minutes, worldwide, but was significantly higher in the US: nearly 21 minutes on July 7. By August 7, that was down to 3 minutes.
• For comparison, X (formerly Twitter) has more than 100 million daily active users on Android alone, and they consistently spend about 25 minutes per day on it.

None of these statistics mean Threads will not eventually succeed, only that its “overnight success” was too good to be true.

The user count boomed, then dropped fast

Here is what the rise and fall of Threads looks like to date, compared with X (formerly Twitter).

After briefly rivaling X in time spent, Threads has lost user attention

In the US, Threads captured nearly as much active user time as X (formerly Twitter) at launch but has since fallen far behind.

Although Twitter refugees might appreciate Threads for its comparative lack of unnecessary drama, Threads is also missing much of the intriguing content that keeps X users coming back – if only to read and comment on each other’s posts critical of X owner Elon Musk.

The not-Twitter social network still needs to find its footing

Threads arrived on the scene during the latest flurry of controversies at Twitter, which had not yet rebranded itself as X but had annoyed active users with rate limits on posts, giving them extra incentive to look at an alternative. Threads may still have a better chance of becoming “the new Twitter” than some other alternatives, but it needs to provide its users with more reasons to keep coming back.

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Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

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Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash (cropped)

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".