Even by the rapid-fire standards of the tech world, the new Threads app absolutely flew out of the starting gate. However, it remains to be seen if the app will fizzle out or stick.
We’ve collected some of the most pertinent data of the weeks since its launch to help you better understand its potential value to you and your company. After all, none of us wants to commit to yet another social platform unless it will genuinely help our business.
What Is Threads?
Threads is a social platform that’s trying to challenge the hegemony of Twitter (now X, but for clarity, Twitter here). Subscribers can use their existing Instagram profile to launch their Threads account. Once on the platform, they can post up to 500 characters at a time, including photos, links, and videos under 5 minutes.
It’s Meta’s vision that Threads will “take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas”(Meta).
What’s Going Well?
Users are largely dissatisfied with Twitter. Upheavals in management, staffing changes, and the newly announced rate limits increasingly prompt people to look elsewhere for their microblogging content. To date, no other platform has risen to true prominence, and Threads jumped on this market opportunity.
The easy sign-up for existing Instagram users is a big plus in favor of Threads; it takes just seconds to join. This easy transition is likely a big reason why it broke so many download records so quickly.
Who’s Using It So Far?
A large part of the decision to advertise or engage on a certain social platform revolves around the user demographics. If your target customers aren’t there, why would you be?
Here are a few takeaways from what we know of the user base of Threads.
They’re all over the world
They Skew Young and Male
The greatest number of users are in Gen Z. Beyond this generational divide, the breakdown of gender and age skews toward male and young.
What Challenges Is It Facing?
Despite the early successes of the platform, it’s not all good news. According to recent data from SimilarWeb on its best day (July 7), there were roughly 49 million Android Threads users, just under half those of Twitter (109 million) that day.
A week later, Threads was down to 23 million active Android users. Users are also reducing their time on the app, down to 6 minutes per day on July 14 from 21 minutes on July 7.
As a side note – while it is reported that there are more iOS users than Android users, capturing data from Apple systems is complex, and as a result, much of our information centers on Android users.
Threads is outperforming most other like apps but still lagging behind existing app giants like Facebook.
Sources: HuffPost, Statista, Backlinko, TechCrunch, Techcrunch
To put that into perspective with other social platforms:
Source: Buffer
Features Frustration
The new rate limits put in place on Twitter likely spurred a quick Threads release. The limit means that Twitter users who don’t subscribe to Twitter Blue can only see 600 posts per day, a frustrating development for many (TechCrunch).
But this rush to market means that Threads lacks some key features that micro-bloggers enjoy on other platforms, like direct messaging, trending topics, and web-based functionality. Additionally, Threads is not active in the EU, limiting its growth.
Should You Start Your Threads Journey?:
Threads is not a clear “Twitter killer” as many hoped it might be. It has about a fifth of the daily active users of Twitter and a long way to go in functionality, features, and sign-ups to truly take over.
Further, about 96% of Threads users were also on Instagram, 58% on Facebook, and 56% on Twitter, meaning you could reach them elsewhere (Enterprise Apps Today). So, if you’re trying to reach young men in India, data says Threads could be a great choice, but if your audience is broader than that, it might be more prudent to wait and see.
When it comes down to it, Threads was launched less than a month ago (July 5). It is just too soon to tell if it’ll die out like Google Plus or become the app that actually takes on the stumbling giant that is Twitter.
