Meta’s Threads is struggling to get users on its platform after a wildy successful launch week. Threads was marketed as ‘Twitter Killer’ at a time when many frustrated Twitter users have been looking for alternatives, tired of the changes brought in by Elon Musk.
According to data by markets analysis firm Sensor Tower, traffic for Threads has plummeted 75 percent since its debut on July 6. Meanwhile, SimilarWeb data shows that the average time spent by users on the Threads app has come down to 4 minutes from 19 minutes on iOS and to 5 minutes from 21 minutes on Android.
Threads had become the fastest-growing app ever amassing more than 100 million active users in just 5 days since its launch even going past popularity ratings set by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The newest social media app from Meta has been downloaded over 184 million times globally, according to Data.ai Intelligence.
Why is Threads losing traffic?
One of the major reasons for the Threads app losing traction among users is the lack of clarity regarding what the app is supposed to be. While at the launch, it seemed like Instagram wants to garner the angry Twitter users and lure them towards a new platform. However, it seems like Threads and Twitter cater to completely different audiences.
Over the years, Twitter has been known as a forum for news and politics where popular personalities like journalists, celebrities, athletes and politicians go to vent out their ‘political’ and sometimes controversial opinions. Instagram and other Meta services have been known to shy away from political commentary and focus on engaging in images and videos.
Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri has cleared that the newest social media entrant doesn’t want to dive into politics or hard news. The shyness of Threads to cater to news and political content begs the question about the audience Threads wants to cater to.
Twitter boss Elon Musk had also raised this issue in reply to a Tweet on July 8, he wrote, “How many times have you read comments on Insta pics & wished there were more? Personally, never.”
Threads is also moving towards imposing a rate limit to the posts in order to ward off spam accounts. Days before the launch of Threads, Musk had also announced imposing a temporary restriction on the number of posts that can be viewed in a day, enraging many users on Twitter.
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Updated: 23 Jul 2023, 11:03 AM IST
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