Threads continues to gain ground with users and could be on its way to becoming bigger than X.
Meta's newest social-media app, launched last summer on the back of Instagram's tech, has seen its daily active users grow consistently since November, per estimates from Apptopia. Threads is a direct rival of X, which has struggled to maintain its user base since Elon Musk acquired the platform about 18 months ago.
Now, Threads has more daily users in the US than X, a trend that's been consistent since December, when Threads became Apple's most-downloaded app for a time.
"Threads DAUs in the US passed X in December 2023 and it has not looked back," Thomas Grant, Apptopia's VP of research, said. It's currently the third-most-downloaded free app in Apple's App Store, while X is No. 41. In the Google Play store, Threads is No. 12 among free apps, while X is No. 44.
So far in April, Threads has averaged an estimated 28 million daily active users — those who have opened the app at least once in a 24-hour period. That's a roughly 55% increase in DAUs from December, when Threads averaged an estimated 18 million users a day.
X has averaged 22 million DAUs this month so far — 21% lower than Threads' average. DAUs on X have been relatively flat for the past three months but are up since December when the platform had 17 million DAUs. December was the first month Threads beat X on DAUs in the US.
X users remain down overall compared to before Musk took over the platform. Sensor Tower, a market-research firm, estimates that daily users of the X app are down 19% worldwide compared to October 2022, the month that Musk took over the platform. X DAUs worldwide are down 14% year over year in the first quarter of this year.
Still, Threads has work to do before it unseats X as the most popular microblogging app and hits Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's goal of 1 billion users — and promotional work with Taylor Swift may not be the way to go about it.
When Swift used Threads for the first time last week to promote her new album — and received several bespoke features to do so — Sensor Tower said Threads gained "no noticeable lift" in users. An estimate of daily users from Apptopia for the week also showed no gain in users.
X's monthly active users in the US also handily beats Threads. Apptopia estimated that Threads has had around 100 million US MAUs for the past three months, though Zuckerberg said in February that the total number of MAUs was closer to 130 million. Either way, X has over 140 million MAUs in the US alone, though users have fluctuated over the past year between 135 million and the current 140 million.
Zuckerberg still seems bullish on Threads and has spoken highly of it on every quarterly earnings call since its launch in July, saying in February it's "on track to be a major success."
"I'm optimistic we can keep the pace of improvements and growth going and show that a friendly, discussion-oriented app can be as widely used as the most popular social apps," he said.
Meta reports its first-quarter results on Wednesday.
Are you a Meta or X employee or someone with a tip or insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@bjinnox.com or on the secure-messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device.
Correction: April 25, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the CEO of TikTok's name. It is Shou Zi Chew, not Shou Zi Chou.
