If you’ve already lost interest in Meta’s Twitter rival, Threads, you're not alone. The social media app may have lost about half of its traffic.
That latest data from web-traffic tracker SimilarWeb shows that daily active users for Threads dropped to 23.6 million on Friday, down from the 49 million active users the app saw on July 7, a day after it first launched.
The 23.6 million number also indicates Threads only had about 22% of Twitter’s audience. “Usage in the US, which saw the most activity, peaked at about 21 minutes of engagement with the app on July 7. By July 14, that was down to a little over 6 minutes,” the report adds.
One caveat here is that SimilarWeb says it only has reliable numbers for Android users, not iOS. It plans on sharing metrics for iPhone users in the coming weeks. Still, the sharp decrease shows that while Threads was able to easily attract a flood of sign-ups—over 100 million—because it hooked into Instagram, the real challenge will be driving user engagement.
“Threads is missing many basic features and still needs to offer a compelling reason to switch from Twitter or start a new social media habit with Threads,” SimilarWeb adds.
Nevertheless, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his new app is still drawing a large user base. “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily,” he wrote in a Threads post on Monday.
“That's way ahead of what we expected,” he adds. “The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention. It'll take time to stabilize, but once we nail that then we'll focus on growing the community.”
On Tuesday, Meta also released a new version of Threads app, which includes language translation and a follows tab, which will supposedly make it easier to see who’s following your account. The company is also planning to add an edit button and offer a desktop mode.