Earlier this year, Isaiah Samad had been searching for a replacement for Twitter, and he felt that the hot reviews and incitement to hatred on Twitter had become ubiquitous, making him tired.
When Threads, a subsidiary of MetaPlatforms, was launched in July, he registered for the app and later found that the atmosphere on the app was more comfortable and positive. Eventually, he closed his account on X (formerly Twitter).
Samad is one of the approximately 10 million daily active users worldwide pursuing so-called civilized communication, with many flocking to Threads as a replacement for Elon Musk's X. Many users of this new service believe that civilized communication is one of the core strengths of the platform, even though they still hope to obtain new features such as hot topics and topic tags.
The demand for enhanced immediacy on Threads is the core challenge faced by Meta. The new microblogging product, Meta, had over 100 million registered users in less than a week of launch, and its growth rate has slowed down since then. It is now resuming growth. Although Musk claims to be an absolutist of freedom of expression and avoids content review, Threads has taken a number of measures to carefully manage some discussions, such as blocking the search for COVID-19.
At a time when X's rapidly changing policies, features, and setbacks have left some users feeling frustrated, Threads has gained new stickiness from regular users who crave an informative alternative, especially in important news moments such as the current war between Israel and Hamas. According to data from the analysis company SensorTower, the usage of Threads increased by 13% in the week of October 9th compared to the average level in the previous three weeks. Compared to the average of the first three weeks, the usage of X increased by about 3% during that week.
The emergence of Threads has reshaped the microblogging market. Since July, X's daily active users have decreased by approximately 9%. According to SensorTower's estimate of global monthly active users, Twitter's market share in the microblog monthly user market exceeded 99.9% in September last year. As of September this year, X's market share has decreased to less than 82%, while Threads' market share has approached 18%.
Even so, Threads still lags far behind X in terms of its main features and number of users. Threads' monthly active users in the United States are equivalent to nearly one sixth of X's, but it lags far behind X in terms of daily average active users. According to SensorTower's data, Threads has an average daily active user count of 1.4 million in the United States, but still lags far behind X's 29 million. Advertisers closely monitor the platform's daily active user numbers.
Although many Threads users continue to use X, some claim that posts posted on Threads receive more response and interaction, even with fewer followers.
Princeton University history professor Kevin Kruse, who has over 476000 followers on X, said on Threads last week that although he has only 44500 followers on this new service platform, his posts posted here have received more interaction. He also said that the same is true on another Weibo service platform, Bluesky.
Meta executives have stated that they do not intend to amplify the impact of news on Threads, but are developing features such as hot topics and tags, and may release them soon. From the beginning, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others have been committed to creating a civilized environment.
Meta's Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, said in an interview at the TechLive conference of The Wall Street Journal last week: "We have the opportunity to create a more tone friendly platform." He said that the company hopes to engage people in less hard news and geopolitical topics, and more content in sports, science, or fitness, food, and other fields.
But some Threads users say they do want to see more news.
Romit Mehta, 49, from Cupertino, California, said he used to refer to Twitter as his newspaper. After Musk acquired the company in October 2022, he left the platform because he felt Twitter had become too negative. Now he has become a daily active user of Threads, but he hopes to see more news on the application.
Mehta said, "I hope they take action in this regard as soon as possible, because this will actually make it the role that Twitter once played as a newspaper
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram under Meta, stated after Threads was launched in July this year that political and hard news will come with censorship, negative, and integrity risks, so it is not worth it. Recently, he retracted this statement.
In October, Mosseri posted on Threads saying, "We are not anti news, there is news on the Threads platform." "We are just trying to avoid making too many promises to an exceptionally strong group and not fulfilling them enough, which is a mistake we have made multiple times as a company in the past
Kathy Yost, a 47 year old Maryland resident who joined Threads a few months ago, said that the use of Threads has been on the rise since the start of the Israel Hamas war.
She said, "When such major events occur, people need a platform to discuss them." Yost has attracted nearly 6000 users' attention by posting topics such as labor movement, LGBT communities, and the 2024 US election.
37 year old Jitpal Kocher also found himself opening this app multiple times every day to see what content people in the technology and startup communities are posting. Although he likes Threads, Kocher said he noticed that there aren't as many people on this platform.
Kocher said, "Its content doesn't have that level yet," pointing out that there is still a lack of content in some sectors such as sports. If you refresh at 6am on Sunday morning, there won't be a lot of new content
Users say they like the way Mosseri, Zuckerberg, and other Meta employees interact with them and receive feedback on this application. Some users also claimed that the atmosphere on Threads seemed very positive, reminding them of early Twitter.
For me, the best thing is that everyone looks very friendly, "Kocher said." It's like we're all posting together