'Twitter-killer' Threads user engagement drops after massive initial surge

In stark contrast to its meteoric launch, Threads has witnessed a major decline in user engagements with a nearly 20 percent reported drop in the last few days.

Threads is Instagram’s answer to Elon Musk-owned Twitter. (Bloomberg)

'Twitter-killer', that's how everyone was describing Threads as it soared past the 100 million mark in just 5 days. It even set a record for being the fastest social media platform to reach that number. While everyone was flocking to Instagram's new microblogging platform, Twitter was dealing with its issues of data scraping and system manipulation. However, the tables now seemed to have turned as the initial fad about Threads seems to be fading as the microblogging platform has witnessed a huge drop in user engagement in the last few days.

Drop in user engagement

Within 24 hours of launch, Threads had amassed 50 million sign-ups, and in further 7 days, it gained 150 million users, becoming the fastest platform to do so. In a conversation with CNBC, Anthony Bartolacci, managing director at marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower said, “In the 10-plus years Sensor Tower has been estimating app installs, the first 72 hours of Threads was truly in a class by itself,” stating that it did ‘break the internet'. However, everything is not sunshine and rainbows now as the Twitter rival has witnessed a massive drop in user engagement.

According to the Sensor Tower report (via CNBC), Threads witnessed a 20 percent drop in daily users on July 11 and 12 as compared to Saturday, July 9. Moreover, the time users spent on the app also decreased from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, a whopping drop of 50 percent.

Another report by data analytics company SimilarWeb revealed a similar drop in traffic. It reported a 25 percent decrease in active users while the minutes spent on the app were also reduced from 20 minutes to just 8 minutes.

“The backing of Meta and the integration with Instagram likely gives Threads a much higher flood than other services, but it will need a more compelling value proposition than simply ‘Twitter, but without Elon Musk,” Bartolacci added.

Not yet a Twitter-Killer

So, ‘Twitter-killer' Threads hasn't been able to finish off its competitor yet. Perhaps that is due to the lack of popular features such as hashtags and topical search. On the other hand, Twitter continues to set new records, as per Musk even though he has admitted that advertising revenue is dropping.

In a tweet last Wednesday, Musk revealed, “Cumulative user-seconds per day of phone screentime, as reported by iOS & Android, is hardest to game. I think we may hit an all-time record this week.”