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Threads User Count Falls To New Lows (cnn.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
Threads, Meta's Twitter rival, is struggling to retain users roughly a month after its highly publicized launch, according to fresh industry estimates showing that app engagement has fallen to new lows. From a report: The data from market research firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower highlight the challenges facing Meta as it seeks to exploit the opening created by the chaos surrounding Twitter's management. Threads' daily active user count is down 82% from launch as of July 31, according to Sensor Tower, with just eight million users accessing the app each day.

That is the lowest it has been since the day after the app's release when daily active users peaked at roughly 44 million, Sensor Tower said. People are also opening the app less frequently and spending less time there, Sensor Tower added. On its launch day, Threads users opened the app an average of 14 times and spent an average of 19 minutes scrolling through it, the company reported. By the end of the month, however, those figures had fallen sharply.
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Threads User Count Falls To New Lows More

Threads User Count Falls To New Lows

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  • News? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:22AM (#63739916) Homepage

    I thought this was a "news" site, not a "foreheadslappingly-obvious" site.

    • ...but news for nerds, so there's obvious interest in Processes and Threads - Threads death even more so.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Indeed I constantly worry about my threads coming back home:
        error.log.1:[Thu Aug 03 20:17:35.510859 2023] [mpm_event:warn] [pid 518:tid 140471501145216] AH00488: long lost child came home! (pid 20941)

    • Mate, Slashdot has been posting crypto-related failures for yonks.

  • "highly publicized" (Score:3)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:30AM (#63739940)

    I may live under a rock, but I didn't hear about Threads for at least a day after it was launched.

    I would contend that had its launch been "highly publicized" I would have read something about it at the time.

    In my opinion, the bar for "highly publicized" is something like a political ad blitz before an election.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      as a heavy instagram user, I had no idea what Threads was or why everyone already had accounts and was advertising them. when i dared to mention this i was laughed at as if Threads was on par with the moon landing.

    • I haven't heard about threads for a very long time too, I discovered it about 2 days ago, when a friend showed it to me. Before that, I had no idea something like this existed.

  • They should have seen this coming (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CEC-P ( 10248912 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:35AM (#63739956)
    The massive, explosive, amazing, ASTONISHING numbers were because they went to Instagram and nagged everyone to use it. It basically was the messaging system for Instagram. Unfortunately they forgot order of operations.
    1. Make it good, as in not a stream of irrelevant, unrelated to users' interests nonsense that nobody cares about like dumb news stories and dumb celebrities
    2. invite everyone to it

    If you didn't look into it, basically everyone had the same take: "I don't care about any of this. Why is it showing me this?" I guess big data is a thing for a reason. If only Threads was made by a company with access to large amount of user topic interest data. OH WELL. Maybe next time.

    • Re:They should have seen this coming (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:41AM (#63739976)
      Big Tech is obsessed with "push popularity". The idea is to create culture top down by showing enough people a topic all at the same time. Thus um... favored... points of view... can immediately become common knowledge. The sad thing is that Threads isn't dying for trying to do this but for pushing too hard. By the way, I wonder why Slashdot keeps posting highly similar stories.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      If you didn't look into it, basically everyone had the same take: "I don't care about any of this. Why is it showing me this?" I guess big data is a thing for a reason. If only Threads was made by a company with access to large amount of user topic interest data. OH WELL. Maybe next time.

      Threads is a very corporate version of social media that forgot the "social" part of social media. As someone else pointed out, it's very much the "push-first" version of social media, where the social media program decides what message it wants to show you and promotes posts based on that. (This isn't necessarily political, it can be based on advertisers paying for promotion.)

      The problem is that there's no way to break out of that "push" bubble, which makes the program worthless. And it's kind of strange,

    • they need users to attract content creators and in turn users. There's no "make it good" here. They copied Twitter (excuse me, X) and, well, that's good enough right now. Plenty of X.com refugees looking for a way out.

      But there is a *lot* of inertia in social media. I don't use it myself, but a lot of left wing content creators are basically stuck there because that's how people hear about their YouTube videos. So if they stop posting (and stop signal boosting for X) they lose 1/4-1/2 their views. So th

      • They sort of copied Twitter, but they left out the important bits.

        On Twitter, there's a "Following" tab where you could see posts from the people you follow. Not an endless stream of random BS. Meta decided that the important part was the endless stream of random BS. Threads will usually show one post from someone you follow at the top, but that's it. If the people you follow posted more than one thing since you last opened the app, you have to dig into profile->settings->privacy->profiles you

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

      My left wing friends complain about post-Musk Twitter a lot. People couldn't wait to get off it. Even centrists don't want to read the "how dare they hold Trump to the law he changed to get Hillary" and "the vaccine made my dick fall off" posts pushed down their throat by Musk.

      Many of them already went to Mastodon. Those who didn't will be patient with Threads. They didn't care that much that its privacy policy basically said "we'll steal everything on your phone". If they can't get Threads to work, or

  • Role Models (Score:5, Funny)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:35AM (#63739958) Homepage Journal

    Threads aspires to be Google Plus.

    • Re:Role Models (Score:4, Insightful)

      by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:43AM (#63739978)

      In complete honesty, Google+ was superior to Facebook in almost any way.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Except for the Metcalfe's Law aspect of it.

      • except for the fact that only like 4 people used it

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dwedit ( 232252 )

        Except that when people actually wanted to try it out, it was *Invite Only*, so you couldn't actually try it out. And thus lose interest in the product before it actually becomes available to the public.

      • Google+ was used by corporate to get everyone's name and gender. This was to support their advertising push (to help them compete with Facebook). Once they got that, they dropped the product because they had what they wanted.

        Which is a shame, since truly was a better product. Google+ was the moment when the suits at Google won the fight against the engineers to have a decent company.

    • And X aspires to be Twitter.

  • Can we please limit stories on any given topic to one per month? We already had two "threads is dying" this month, even if there is new information. Likewise "the climate is dying", "Elon Musk said something", "Bill Gates said something" "LLMs are a thing now", "this particular bit currency is a scam" and "a company is selling users info". I'm not asking you to hold back entirely, I know how badly you want to circle jerk, but just tone it down, will you?

    • Can we please limit stories on any given topic to one per month? We already had two "threads is dying" this month, even if there is new information. Likewise "the climate is dying", "Elon Musk said something", "Bill Gates said something" "LLMs are a thing now", "this particular bit currency is a scam" and "a company is selling users info". I'm not asking you to hold back entirely, I know how badly you want to circle jerk, but just tone it down, will you?

      You know I wonder about this.

      In the past couple of weeks or so Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X, no news story (there's been a lot of insane Twitter stuff that never made /.).

      And it was revealed that Elon Musk ordered Teslas to overestimate their battery range, and then created a secret team to handle all of the predictable service appointments [reuters.com].

      Neither of these stories made /. yet we've just seen another "Threads is losing users" story.

      I don't know the reason, but something weird is going on with the story se

      • The Tesla thing is not as you described - Tesla created a group to do remote diagnostics to triage an increasing number of battery service calls - that saved the owners wasting their time getting service calls for non-issues.

        I noticed this in your linked-to article:

        The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required Tesla since the 2020 model year to reduce the range estimates the automaker wanted to advertise for six of its vehicles by an average of 3%. The EPA told Reuters, however, that it expects some variation between the results of separate tests conducted by automakers and the agency.

        THREE PERCENT!?!? That's the scandal? That's the lie?

        I think I know why it wasn't in the news - it's a non-issue!

        Seriously, there's a meaningful difference between a 300 mile ADVERTISED range and a 294 mile ACTUAL range?

        • The Tesla thing is not as you described - Tesla created a group to do remote diagnostics to triage an increasing number of battery service calls - that saved the owners wasting their time getting service calls for non-issues.

          The reason that they were getting the service calls is that the Tesla was configured to lie about the range and when drivers saw the massive delta between the range they got and the range their car said they should get they logically assumed a battery issue.

          I noticed this in your linked-to article:

          The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required Tesla since the 2020 model year to reduce the range estimates the automaker wanted to advertise for six of its vehicles by an average of 3%. The EPA told Reuters, however, that it expects some variation between the results of separate tests conducted by automakers and the agency.

          THREE PERCENT!?!? That's the scandal? That's the lie?

          I think I know why it wasn't in the news - it's a non-issue!

          Seriously, there's a meaningful difference between a 300 mile ADVERTISED range and a 294 mile ACTUAL range?

          Not really the issue.

          The EPA range is relatively accurate under good driving conditions. The problem is that EVs are hurt really badly by non-ideal conditions such as cold weather. Rather than give the owner an accurate range estimate, which they could d

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

      Apparently enough people do care, otherwise they wouldn't keep posting them.

  • Hanging on by a Thread (Score:4, Funny)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @10:45AM (#63739992)

    Ba dum bum

  • I tried to use it (Score:4, Informative)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @11:04AM (#63740090)

    ..but it's mobile only
    This is a showstopper for me
    Even if I could use it, it looks uninteresting
    I aggressively avoid pop culture and it seems like twitter and threads exist solely to spread it

    • This is the reason I haven't bothered with Threads, no web interface. I never do "internet" on a phone, only the desktop PC.

  • But the execution was obviously not good enough.

  • Not News - Predictable Pattern (Score:3)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @11:48AM (#63740244) Homepage

    Every single business out there gets a boom from novelty (Grand Opening!) and those who are already be in the market for the product or service may patronize the business out of happenstance. After that, though, if the business isn't decidedly better than all local competitors, they're patronage is going to regress until they have be more competitive.

    Threads is not competitive right now. They have a captured population which fed their "grand opening" rush, but until they do something to differentiate themselves from the social-media-app-formally-known-as-Twitter in such a way to attract committed app usage, they're just going to fade.

    My advice: Ex-Twitter's leadership seems bent on squeezing every dollar possible out of users. Threads should offer FREE account validation for non-profits, public agencies, and major news media organizations. Threads can differentiate themselves as being the INFORMATION hub and people will tune in.

    • Threads can differentiate themselves as being the INFORMATION hub and people will tune in.
      Until the INFORMATION hub becomes a only popular or sanitized INFORMATION hub, then it's a slippery slope to propaganda, and advertising posing as information.
  • The Threads users are so engaged in his Metaverse they haven't had time to post.
  • I'd consider using threads if they decoupled account closures from Instagram. Until that crap is done, I won't even open it.
    I don't even know the URL.

  • critical mass (Score:2, Redundant)

    by groobly ( 6155920 )

    For something like Threads to succeed, it needs a critical mass of content. The content is not adequate to support the desired number of eyeballs, even with twitter's chaos.

  • I think I gave myself a concussion by Picard Facepalming at this bollocks. Is today a slow news day where people state the obvious? Of course its usership was going to drop! Sudden userbases which are huge inevitably collapse. Just look at My Space.

  • What they could expect? (Score:3)

    by sombragris ( 246383 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @12:31PM (#63740390) Homepage

    So this is a text-based social network with absolutely no web/desktop access, and they wonder why they are losing users? Seriously, what they could expect??

    Typing on a mobile tactile keyboard is excruciatingly awful. As long as they don't provide a consistent desktop website from which the user could navigate and type threads, they will keep losing users.

  • The remaining 20% are bots.

  • For all the righteous.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday August 04, 2023 @02:38PM (#63740772) Journal

    Elon's laughing his ass off at you. I hope you realize that?

    BBC, CNN, NYT, NPR - all were deeply invested in deplatforming Musk and destroying Twitter once it no longer served as the echo chamber of the Apparatchik. The ceaseless stories about Threads being the Twitter killer (let's not talk about Mastodon before it, k?), the constant ruminations about the MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of people leaving Twitter to go to Threads, the pre-obituaries, etc, etc.
    I think Ron Pearlman "definitively quit" Twitter what, 3 times now?
    Nothing but mockery. Hilarious to the rest of us.

    You're all the equivalent of the people who whinged "If (Y) wins, I'm gonna go to CANADA!"

    Y being any Republican candidate, of course.
    BTW we're all still waiting for you to leave. You can all fuck right off, anytime now.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jwymanm ( 627857 )
      This is why Twitter is so important. Any comment that is anywhere anti progressive or siding with today's propaganda (conflicts with mainstream) gets automatically downvoted here to oblivion and can't be seen by normal viewers unless they nav at -4 sometimes. Now the target is frigging free speech. Nothing liberal or progressive about attacking any kind of speech. Majority of /. and media are now pro censorship. Sad what has happened. There is no room for any more loss of free speech on the Internet. Gover
  • Don't care. It was a knockoff anyway, and it's already burst its bubble.

  • I stopped visiting Threads because every time I go there, a bunch of posts show up but they are all absolute garbage. Corporate spam.

    Whereas when I go to Mastodon, I don't find a lot of (or really, any of) my friends, family, or people from my immediate area, or even metro area or state. Which is the type of thing that made social media interesting back in the day, and still pulls me into Facebook or Twitter every once in a while.

    But Mastodon I do find it productive to check in to once in a while, because

  • No one says that. It never made money, No one wanted to buy it before his election. Jack Dorsey is an ungrateful midget.

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