Threads Hits 175 Million Users, One Year After Launch

The Threads social media app belonging to Meta Platforms has been quietly ramping up its challenge to Elon Musk’s X.

Reuters reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday revealed that Threads now has over 175 million monthly active users.

If true, this is a notable milestone for the social media platform that had witnessed a surge of growth to 112 million users following its launch on 5 July 2023, amid the widespread disillusionment with Elon Musk’s running of X.

Threads anniversary

But that initial surge of Threads users in less than a week after its launch did not last long.

Mark Zuckerberg in an internal town hall meeting in late July 2023 confirmed the app had lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its launch.

Since then Threads has received multiple updates, which included a chronological feed of posts from the people or organisations that a user follows; making the app available to users in the European Union; and releasing a desktop version of the Threads app.

Threads was also opened to other social media platforms (such as Mastodon) that use the ActivityPub protocol.

Monthly active users

Now Reuters noted that Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Wednesday that Threads has over 175 million monthly active users.

“What a year,” said Zuckerberg in a Threads post on Wednesday.

It comes after Meta in April had revealed that Threads had more than 150 million monthly active users.

Reuters noted that the monthly average user count gives only a limited picture of the popularity of Threads, which has not revealed key metrics such as the daily active user count and average time spent per user.

Although Threads grew the number of users through international expansion and new features, the platform has struggled to drive engagement, after Reuters quoted data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

Last month, users registered an average of three sessions and seven minutes a day on the Threads app, down about 79 percent and 65 percent, respectively, from July last year, as per Sensor Tower data.