By John Ikani
Despite a spectacular launch that saw more than 100 million users signing up within a mere five days, it appears that Threads app is now facing a retention dilemma, with over half of its initial users dropping off.
Threads was launched by Meta on July 5 and achieved an impressive 30 million sign-ups in the first 24 hours.
Many believed it had the potential to rival Twitter, especially after Elon Musk introduced several changes to the platform, including a rate view limit that restricted the number of tweets users could view daily.
Despite the initial excitement, Threads’ journey has encountered some obstacles on the path to sustained engagement.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, openly addressed the concern during a company town hall meeting on Thursday, saying, “Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet.”
Third-party data from SimilarWeb indicates that Threads experienced a significant decline in daily active users on Android, plummeting from 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14, and further dropping to 12.6 million on July 23.
While the numbers on iOS are yet to be disclosed, SimilarWeb suspects a similar pattern might emerge.
Despite the drop in users, Zuckerberg reassured employees that user retention was better than initially expected. He considered the drop-off “normal” and expressed confidence in improved retention as they continue to add more features, such as a desktop version and search functionality.
Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, suggested exploring “retention-driving hooks” like allowing users on the Instagram app to access important Threads content.
This integration could potentially help boost engagement.
