From Boom to Bust: Meta's Threads Faces Rapid Decline in User Engagement After Explosive Launch - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

In July earlier this year, Meta Platforms Inc. META Threads became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, but now it appears to be moving toward breaking the record for the biggest loss in user engagement on a social media platform.

What Happened: Just five days after its launch, Meta’s Threads reached the milestone of 100 million users, beating even OpenAI’s ChatGPT to become the fastest app to surpass the 1 million mark.

However, the app, dubbed “Twitter killer,” could not sustain the momentum.

Within a week after reaching the 100 million users mark, Threads reportedly started noticing a decline in daily active users and app usage time.

According to Similarweb, a data aggregation company specializing in web analytics, the average global time active users engaged with Threads daily was approximately 14 minutes. In the U.S., this duration was notably higher, reaching nearly 21 minutes on July 7.

However, this figure was down to just three minutes a month later.

The report further noted that on July 7, the highest point of Threads usage in the U.S. was recorded at around 2.3 million daily active users. The number has since dwindled to approximately 576,000.

Why It’s Important: While the report emphasized that the aforementioned statistics do not reflect on Threads’ future but only cast doubt on the app’s “overnight success,” it is important to note there have been other social media platforms in the past, which started strong but couldn’t sustain their initial momentum.

There are many examples of such apps, including DailyBooth – which reached 3 million uploads in six months, iTunes Ping – which launched with 1 million users, YikYak — which at its peak was valued at $400 million, Vine — which became the most downloaded free app on iOS in the U.S. at its peak in 2013 and Clubhouse – launched in April 2020 and by December had over 600,000 registered users.

All the apps mentioned above were able to attract users’ attention in the beginning, but either they were not able to adapt as other rivals or got surrounded by security and privacy.

Having said that, during the second quarter earnings calls, Mark Zuckerberg hinted at building and experimenting with features that users enjoyed and didn’t seem fazed by the flagging user engagement on Threads. “I’m highly confident that we’re gonna be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow.”

Simply put, Threads must make swifter and smarter moves to pick up engagement on the platform to repeat the history of Facebook and Instagram’s success.

Photo by rafapress on Shutterstock

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