Key Insights
- Daily active users of Instagram Threads app experienced a significant drop of 40% in the first week after its launch.
- The average daily time per user on Threads decreased fourfold, indicating a decline in user engagement with the platform.
- Despite reaching 100 million users quickly, the retention rate for new users is much lower than Twitter’s 7-day retention rate.
Daily active users of Twitter’s rival platform Threads on Instagram fell in the first week after its launch. There are several reasons why the initial growth in the number of users cannot be maintained now.
Just a week ago, the Instagram Threads app exceeded 100 million users, becoming one of the fastest to reach that milestone. However, not everything is as rosy as it seems with the latest social media app.
Is the Instagram Threads app falling apart?
On July 17, Olivia Moor, a consumer partner at Andreessen Horowitz, released an update on the Threads ecosystem.
A week after launch, Threads’ daily active user count dropped by 40%. In contrast, the average daily time per user fell fourfold. She added:
It turns out that connecting 100 million users to a copied product is not an easy task.
Late last week, Axios confirmed a decline in daily active users and time spent on the platform. The average time users spent on Instagram Threads dropped by 50%: from 20 minutes to just 10 minutes.
Moore admitted that the speed with which the Threads app reached 100 million users was remarkable. However, most of them were automatically transferred from Instagram, so they were not new users of the ecosystem.
SensorTower estimated that 16% of users returned to the platform a week after downloading, about half of Twitter’s 7-day retention.
Related: Threads vs Twitter: Which is the Best Social Media Platform?
Moore went on to say that users are not coming back because their posts are tied to their real identity on Instagram. Moreover, Instagram users are not as comfortable with creating textual content as Twitter users.
“Twitter has built a unique social profile and interest profile that is hard to replace,” she said. She then concluded:
Even with a copycat product, the underlying networks and user identities developed over a decade are difficult to replicate.
According to Data.ai, India is the country with the most Threads app downloads. They account for about a third of all downloads. However, daily downloads have dropped significantly since the initial increase right after launch.
Instagram Threads receives little attention
Other social media users have complained that Threads has the same censorship policies as Facebook and Instagram.
Last week, Babylon Bee reported that “the new ‘Threads’ app successfully combines everything you hate on Twitter with everything you hate on Instagram.” Meanwhile, tech site Gizmodo reported that engagement with Threads had “declined.”
Some even compared charts showing interest and engagement to a “sh**coin chart”.
Other epic failures of the company formerly known as Facebook include the now-defunct cryptocurrency Diem and its Metaverse, after which the company was renamed.
Is the decline in daily active users on Instagram Threads indicative of underlying challenges in replicating the success of Twitter? Share your thoughts in the comments.