User engagement for Twitter rival Threads falls 70% post early euphoria: WSJ report

Meta unveiled Threads on July 5 and within hours of the app’s launch, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 10 million people had signed up for Threads. Subsequently, the number soared to 100 million people, making it the first app to do so in that time frame.

According to the WSJ report, the average time users spend on the iOS and Android apps has dropped to four minutes from 19 minutes. “The average time spent for Android users in the US dropped to five minutes from a peak of 21 minutes on launch day,” the report said, citing data from the digital data and analytics company SimilarWeb.

On Monday, Zuckerberg suggested there was more he could do to push Threads’ growth. He had not “turned on many promotions yet” for the app, he wrote in a Threads post.

Also read | Why the early success of Threads may crash into reality

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, also said in a Threads post on Monday that there was a running list of new features to add to the new app that people have requested.

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“They say, ‘make it work, make it great, make it grow,’” he wrote, adding, “I promise we will make this thing great.”

Post by @mosseri

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A day later, Mosseri said: “With so many people joining @threads so fast these last six days (six days!) the team has been entirely focused on keeping the lights on and fixing bugs, but we’re starting to prioritise the obvious missing features, like a following feed, the edit button, and post search. We’re clearly way out over our skis on this, but the team is pumped to start shipping improvements this week.”

Also read | Five key questions about Threads and your data answered

Meanwhile, Twitter owner Elon Musk has not shied away from taking jibes at its rival Threads as well as Zuckerberg.

On the day that Threads was officially unveiled, Twitter threatened to sue Meta over the new app. Musk called Zuckerberg a “cuck” on Twitter.
Musk also revealed in a tweet that Twitter has lost roughly half of its advertising revenue since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last October.