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Threads is Now 'Booming', With 130 Million Active Users (techcrunch.com) 52

The Verge reports that Threads is "booming," according to figures shared by Mark Zuckerberg on Meta's earnings call, with 130 million active users a month.

TechCrunch reports: Threads is continuing to grow, having tripled its downloads month-over-month in December, which gave it a place in the top 10 most downloaded apps for the month across both the App Store and Google Play...

Threads famously had a record-breaking launch, reaching 100 million registered users within its first five days. However, the app saw its daily downloads decline starting last September through the end of the year. But in December, Threads once again returned to growth, likely due to the push Meta had given the app by displaying promos on Facebook that featured Threads' viral posts. Today, there are an estimated 160 million Threads users, according to one tracker...

The app could also be benefiting from its move into the "fediverse" — the social network comprised of interconnected servers that communicate via the ActivityPub protocol, like Mastodon... In addition, Threads recently announced the launch of an endpoint, allowing developers of third-party apps and websites to use a dynamic URL to refill text into the Threads composer. For example, there's now a website where anyone can generate Threads share links and profile badges. Marketing tool provider Shareaholic also just launched Threads Share buttons for websites, including both desktop and mobile sites. This flurry of activity around Threads is helping to move the app up in the chart rankings, though some inorganic boosts from Meta itself are likely also responsible for the jump in downloads, given the size.

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Threads is Now 'Booming', With 130 Million Active Users

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  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Saturday February 03, 2024 @04:56PM (#64211420) Homepage Journal

    Anybody have access to active daily users across these platforms?

    I see poof pieces in popular media and paywall sites for advertisers. I get it, ADU is the metric they actually care about.

    Facebook brags about 2.3B ADU which is quite impressive.

    • I see poof pieces in popular media and paywall sites for advertisers. I get it, ADU is the metric they actually care about.

      Not really. The vast majority of internet services do not publish daily users as it's a wildly varying an inaccurate metric. Monthly active users are what matter to virtually all, this includes Meta about Facebook who publish first and foremost the 3.049 billion monthly active users at their earnings call and didn't even mention daily users.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The issue for Twitter is that advertisers view it as toxic. They don't want to advertise there because the owner promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories posted by Nazis, and tolerates that kind of thing on the platform.

      Even if they had 5 billion daily users, advertisers don't want to sully their brands. The only ones that advertise there now are ones with nothing to lose, like crypto scams and something called "Jerk Off Pants".

  • I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pureevilmatt ( 711216 ) on Saturday February 03, 2024 @05:10PM (#64211440)
    I don't doubt that 130 million is the app install base since they've been aggressively pushing it via links in Instagram, but I'd bet that most of those "active users" barely use it.
    • I don't doubt that 130 million is the app install base since they've been aggressively pushing it via links in Instagram, but I'd bet that most of those "active users" barely use it.

      Speaking of buying:

      ...Today, there are an estimated 160 million Threads users, according to one tracker...

      It's a multi-billion dollar global mega-corp. As if they couldn't afford to buy and sell a few "trackers" out there.

    • more sites are starting to link to Threads instead of X.com. It takes ages to build up a social media presence and tons of work to maintain it. The current state of X means that work has a high probability of being all for nothing. Anyone starting a new venture of any kind isn't going to put a lot of effort into X, but they're going to need an equivalent.

      Remember what X really does is let you contact, follow and stay in touch with organizations and celebrities easily. It's a blogging platform. Yes, it's
    • I don't doubt that 130 million is the app install base since they've been aggressively pushing it via links in Instagram, but I'd bet that most of those "active users" barely use it.

      You don't need to buy anything. You can ignore it, but MAU is the standard metric that is used across all social media / internet services. If they are lying about this number they can find themselves getting fucked by lawyers and regulators the world over as this figure actively drives investment and purchase (from ad companies) decisions.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      It's "active monthly users". I.e. logged in at least once a month - "active user".

      "Great growth." "Meta says it has 130 million monthly active users". "Great launch, 100 million users". "One source says it has 160 million users". "More app downloads".

      Put all this together, and you get a picture of a social network that cannot maintain its userbase. I.e. lots of people get referred to download the app, get it, use it a few times and stop, coming back maybe once a month to see if anything changed for the bett

  • Define active (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Berkyjay ( 1225604 ) on Saturday February 03, 2024 @05:32PM (#64211462)

    Because everytime I look at Instagram they show me Threads posts and I get notifications from Threads made by people I follow on IG. My guess is that they're counting a lot of unwanted participants.

    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Yep.

      It's equivalent to 130 million people clicking on a link to something they wanted to see, and then closing out.

    • Re:Define active (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday February 03, 2024 @07:27PM (#64211658)

      Because everytime I look at Instagram they show me Threads posts and I get notifications from Threads made by people I follow on IG. My guess is that they're counting a lot of unwanted participants.

      Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users [socialpilot.co], so that's not it.

      It's basically people clicking some link, which is probably most of Twitter's traffic.

      The dangerous thing for Twitter is when Musk pisses off enough folks that bloggers and folks looking to make a public announcement of some kind start putting up Threads links instead. Then the numbers could shift very quickly.

    • And? Does it matter? If you click on it and end up in Threads, you're active. Your eyeball gets targeted. Your data gets logged. Simply ignoring a notification doesn't make you active (otherwise that number would be an order of magnitude higher), and any other action you do is already enough to sell you to someone else which is ultimately the name of the game.

    • Well I mean I'm pretty sure Facebook video "views" always counted people scrolling past it (because of auto play), so I wouldn't put it past them.

  • I'm a editor who bought meta after the 20% bump. This is my pumping article hopping meta goes up another 20%!
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday February 03, 2024 @06:57PM (#64211614)

    Any competition is good competition.

    I won't use Threads any more than I use Facebook, but I welcome anything that breaks a monopoly. No matter whether I agree with the person doing it.

  • The article doesn't mention that Threads finally launched in the EU in December 2023, which would have given them a decent download boost. Bigger than the boost from "fediverse" I'll bet.
  • I used it to post my photography and managed to only have photo related stuff in my feed so was cool but after a few weeks its like eh bunch of people posting for reach around's. The amount of "if I didn't ask you to critique don't comment on my art work " "Unsolicited criticism in now welcome here..."

  • by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Saturday February 03, 2024 @08:46PM (#64211788)

    I dunno, I still think of Threads as a discount clothing outlet.

    • I thought the same thing ... about a tailor-shop down my front street. If I ask the tailor for threads he shows me a closet of spindles ... each filled with thread of different colors and sizes. So .. what is this FACEBOOK-THREADS ? Is it a vlog/blog or messaging or picture website. Or a service integrated into FACEBOOK ... whatever that might mean. I've never touched FACEBOOK services so I really have no idea.
  • Twitter is trying to rid itself of bots, Threads needs them to prop up its numbers.

    • They didn't need to - last I saw an estimate, over 20% of Instagram traffic is bots and in reality it's most likely a lot more.

      Personally I made an account for commenting some of my friends pictures and I had over 300 followers without posting a single picture in less than a week until I made it private.

  • by dohzer ( 867770 )

    All Facebook services are boomering. The kids left long ago.

  • They went on and on about how they only think in terms of BILLIONS of users. After multiple micro-soliloquies from their staff during my interview, I'm going to conclude that 130 million users is a horrible failure by their own metric.

  • Why hop from one social media controlled by a lizard person to another social media controlled by another lizard person?
    Nostr fixes this
  • Nobody seems to care about Threads. Apart from American liberals perhaps hating Musk, for not turning the platform a censored woke playfield, but only them.

This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks.

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