Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a statement Wednesday, announcing that Threads already surpassed 175 million monthly active users just one year into its launch.
"Threads now has more than 175M monthly actives. What a year," Zuckerberg posted on Threads.
This marks a huge milestone for the social media app, which has gained over 45 million active users since its last report in February.
With the app going strong on its first anniversary, it has proven its worth as a legitimate competitor to the Elon Musk-owned X.
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Threads first launched on July 3 last year, just a few months after Musk's high-profile acquisition of Twitter, which he swiftly rebranded to X.
Nearly the entire world witnessed the chaotic and disruptive changes implemented by the new CEO, who fired a total of 6,000 Twitter employees (or 80% of the workforce).
During this time, Twitter suffered as a platform as well: the app experienced outages, lost a slew of accessibility features, and went through major rule changes that rendered it nearly unusable.
Musk also faced dozens of controversies during and after the takeover, owing to the sometimes outrageous statements he would make on the app, even once implying he would be interested in getting into a cage fight with Zuckerberg.
I’m up for a cage match if he is lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023
Meta leveraged the collective fear and uncertainty of Twitter users during this period to announce the launch of Threads, a platform designed after Twitter itself.
It proved to be a massive hit, as Meta constantly released user-requested updates to enhance user experience.
Threads also shared the same account system used by Instagram, making it convenient for users to migrate their details and contacts to the new app.
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Platform Growth and Engagement
According to The Verge, Meta employees have reported that the app's main source of growth is promotions on Instagram.
Its rapid growth had many insiders predicting its success, with Evercore analysts stating that Threads would reach 200 million daily active users by 2025, generating an estimated $8 billion in annual revenue.
Industry experts have also chimed in on the success of Threads.
In an interview with DesignRush, Moz founder and SEO expert Rand Fishkin described the higher levels of engagement on Threads compared to X.
"I have about 4,500 followers on Threads and 450,000 on Twitter — one-hundredth of my Twitter followers are on Threads. However, I get two to five times as much engagement on Threads versus Twitter," he explained.
Post by @mosseriView on Threads
Unlike X, Threads users don't suffer from forced ads. However, executives may plan to incorporate advertising within the next year or two.
The app has also taken measures to protect itself from the risk of becoming an echo chamber, with Instagram head Adam Mosseri announcing in February that the team would not amplify political content.
The app's latest major update integrated Threads into the fediverse, an open network of interconnected social media platforms that lets users interact across apps.
It joins other major sites like Tumblr, Flipboard, and Mastodon.
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Editing by Katherine 'Makkie' Maclang
