The hype has died down, and the latest Twitter killer looks defeated. After about two weeks of hype surrounding the launch of the popular Meta app, Thread, the number of active users on the social media app reduced drastically.
Have you heard about Thread by Meta? It was hyped up so much before its launch by Facebook that it was dubbed a potential "Twitter Killer" on social media. The excitement surrounding the app was palpable throughout various social media platforms.
Everyone thought, 'Finally, there was an app that could stand toe to toe with the almighty Twitter.' During that period, an incident on Twitter caused a lot of negativity. Elon Musk made a decision that left many questioning his leadership on the platform. He implemented a temporary limit on views.
Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed that some system manipulations were going on and that they needed to add new limits. But he clarified such limitations will be unlocked shortly.
"This will be unlocked shortly. Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping.
Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data," Elon Musk said.
Many Twitter users weren't interested to hear Elon Musk's explanations. Many threatened to leave Twitter because of the new view limit. Of course, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta found this as the perfect opportunity to launch a Twitter competitor. The app they had in mind was called Threads by Meta.
During the peak of Twitter's backlash, numerous users promptly flocked to Thread when it was initially introduced on July 6th. It is no surprise that Threads quickly gained a large following, with over 100 million users within five days. This is an impressive achievement, particularly compared to other social media platforms that often struggle to build a user base.
Threads See Slump in Active Users
Oops, these users are returning to Twitter after they immigrated to Threads by Meta. It didn't take long for many people who moved full-time to Threads to start their journey back to Twitter.
According to data provided by several sources, the number of daily active users dropped drastically. It doesn't maintain half the number of daily active users it had 5 days after it launched. According to data provided by Similarweb, the daily Thread active users dropped from 49 million to 23.6 million. This is a more than 50% drop in the number of users. What could have caused this drop in Thread active users? Some experts have something to say about it.
Threads Accused of Lacking Originality
According to Mike Rhodes, CEO of Applyzer & ConsultMyApp, he claims that Thread by Meta lacks the originality needed to compete with Twitter. He said that most of Thread's content was recycled on Twitter.
"Insta users adopt it with the sole purpose of reposting what they're already sharing on Twitter, which will kill the platform eventually as it will lack original content. Users are wrestling with the effort of maintaining yet another social media platform," Rhodes said while speaking to The Verdict.