Is Threads A Flop Already?
When Instagram’s Threads was first introduced, it started with a bang, climbing to around 120 million users within a week of release. It seemed that everyone wanted an alternative to Twitter (now X). The only problem is that the platform seems to have rolled out prematurely with not enough features that most users looked for. As a result, a variety of reports have seen its user growth basically plateaued, with fewer and fewer people logging in every day.
Threads usage is looking pretty bleak. Daily active user count is down 82% as of July 31st, and users are opening the app less often and spending less time on it. When Threads started users opened the app 14 times a day on average and spent 19 minutes scrolling through it. Now that’s down to just 2.6 sessions a day for a total of 2.9 minutes of viewing time. Plus, Sensor Tower reports that the daily active user count is falling by 1% a day!
Artists and musicians might say, “Who cares, as long as my audience is there,” but the evidence is that major artists haven’t embraced the platform either. According to Digital Music News, “Participation from high-profile creators is another key component of bringing users to Threads. At least on the music side, though, adoption has been slow, with Music Ally indicating that only six of the top-20 musicians on Instagram (by follower count) have ported their profiles to Threads.
Moreover, certain of these six persons aren’t particularly active on Threads; at the time of this writing, Jennifer Lopez’s latter Threads message had been published five days ago, compared to six days for Shakira’s latest message, for instance. Others, like Katy Perry, had post-free profiles on the platform, which Apple has supported with “rich link” iMessage previews.”
Threads is still striving to improve, and although we haven’t seen many new features yet, a few are promised to come soon. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that a desktop version of the app will soon appear, as well as advanced search capabilities.
That might not be enough to get people to change their minds about the platform though. The first impression of anything is important, and it looks like that ship has sailed for Threads.
