For the second week in a row, the number of daily active users on Threads declined, falling to 13 million, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, down about 70% from its July 7 peak.
The average time users spent on the iOS and Android apps also decreased from 19 minutes to four minutes. According to digital data and analytics company SimilarWeb, the average time spent for Android users in the US dropped from a maximum of 21 minutes on launch day to under five minutes.
According to estimates by Sensor Tower, Twitter’s daily active users have remained stable at around 200 million, and the average time spent per day is 30 minutes.
Meta executives have said they expected an eventual drop after the app received more than 100 million sign-ups within a week of its launch earlier this month. They have indicated that they do not consider the decline to be a concern and have said that they are working on additional features. Meta aims to increase the number of users and improve the experience before attempting to monetize the platform.
“It’s clear from the drop-off that people are seeing they can’t do as much, and there are some things they want to be able to do that maybe they can do on other apps,” said Richard Hanna, a professor at Babson College who studies social-media strategy and digital marketing. What needs to be increased is what the app can do, he said.
Some writers and reviewers have stated that threads, which were created using Instagram’s infrastructure, may seem sluggish to some users if they choose to follow the same people they follow on Instagram, as some of those accounts may not post as often as they do. on Twitter. The company’s brands have so far been prevalent on the threads, an issue some users have complained about on the platform.
The official Threads account reiterated the company’s plans to add new features on Thursday. It reposted a video from about a week ago of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram unit that built Threads, promising a laundry list of new features.
The threads post said, “ICYMI: We’re working on bringing you those new features.” Features promised by Mosseri include support for multiple accounts, the ability to edit posts, and chronological feed options like those of Instagram and Facebook.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.
While it’s still early days for the app, it has already made early efforts to differentiate itself from Twitter, establishing itself as a platform with a distinct ethos that doesn’t encourage politics or hard news. Is.
Analysts said Threads has more time to succeed than other startups because it can continue to invest in the app’s success while it adds features and fixes any problems. “Meta certainly has patience, they have money and they have engineering talent,” said Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at market research firm Insider Intelligence.
Although the company has introduced new features, some have been delayed recently due to technical issues.
Cameron Roth, a software engineer at Instagram, posted on the threads on Tuesday that the iOS version of the app has released an update that brings a number of new features — including translations, a Follows tab on the Activity feed, and a new subscription feature for unfollowed users.
However, Roth said in a separate post on Wednesday that the update rollout had been paused while the company investigated an issue that caused networking requests to fail.
META leaders have emphasized that the response to user engagement in the initial launch has exceeded expectations, prioritizing stabilization before engagement.
Mosseri said in a post on Threads last week that “at the moment the focus is not on engagement, which has been amazing, but on overcoming the initial peaks and troughs we see with every new product, and building new features, To improve and improve performance.” ranking.”
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg echoed the sentiments in a post on ThreadsMonday. The company is focusing on stabilization before focusing on growing the community, he said.