Facebook parent company Meta, which made a splash with its new Twitter rival, Threads, has lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its record-breaking launch.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday told employees that more than half the users who signed up for the platform in its first week haven’t kept using the app, reported Reuters, citing an audio recording from an internal company town hall.
For those unversed, Threads had crossed 100 million sign-ups within the first five days of its launch, becoming one of the fastest-growing social media apps of all time.
However, the app started witnessing a decline in the number of daily active users visiting Threads, as well as time spent by the users on the app, raising concerns about user engagement.
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Zuckerberg told Meta staffers that although retention of users on Instagram’s text-based conversation app was better than the company’s executives initially expected, it was “not perfect.”
“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,” the Meta CEO said.
However, Zuckerberg added that he considered this drop to be “normal” and expected retention to increase as more new features were added to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality.
In order to increase user retention as well as persuade users to return to the app, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said Meta is now focused on adding more “retention-driving hooks” to Threads, which includes an integration with the Instagram app, where Instagram users can see important Threads.
By blending these two platforms, Meta is looking to draw Instagram users to Threads, potentially overturning the decreasing trend in the number of users.
Meta has not yet officially commented on Reuter’s report.
Initially, it looked like Threads will capture a large number of Twitter users but not anymore.
Musk on His X (Twitter) profile has shared a graph showing X monthly users reaching an all-time high in 2023.
? monthly users reach new high in 2023 pic.twitter.com/trqLGBEvvA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2023
