By: Nick Gambino
Meta’s Threads is the biggest competitor of X (formerly Twitter) with its focus on simple text-based updates and discussions. Since its launch in July 2023, it has grown significantly.
According to Mark Zuckeberg the social media app now boasts 300 million users and 100 million daily active users.
This is significant not only in that this was accomplished in little more than a year, but it was only at 275 million a month ago. That’s a big jump in a very short period of time.
There have been a ton of X users jumping ship after Elon Musk’s takeover and subsequent policy changes, including the addition of AI scraping to the platform. Many of these users have gravitated to Threads or Bluesky.
Bluesky currently has just over 25 million users, a far cry from the numbers Threads is putting up. But this is to be expected. Threads has the full weight and power of Meta behind it. That company is the umbrella for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. By building a bridge between those platforms, you have a steady stream of new users signing up without much heavy lifting.
Looking beyond the total numbers Bluesky currently boasts, it’s the fact that they’ve doubled those numbers in just a month. The outcome of the U.S. presidential election and Elon Musk’s unabashed support of Trump probably has a lot to do with it.
But back to Threads. Now that the platform is rocking some pretty solid numbers and is steadily moving towards the half a billion mark, we should expect to start seeing ads. This is just how Meta rolls.
And while I don’t mind a free platform monetizing, I don’t really trust Meta to not screw this one up. Facebook in its current form is a complete disaster. My feed is running lousy with AI content, low-quality meme steals and just a treasure trove of digital garbage. From my view, Meta doesn’t seem to be doing anything effective to reclaim the purity of a “social” media platform.
Here’s hoping Meta doesn’t turn into X or Facebook.
