Meta’s new Twitter killer looks to be living up to its name. In less than a week, Threads has already amassed a following of more than 100 million users—meaning it’s officially one of the fastest-growing apps of all time, even faster than ChatGPT—while Twitter’s usage officially is sinking.
Similarweb reported that in the first two days Threads was available, web traffic to twitter.com dropped 5% compared with the same days in the previous week. Compared to that time last year, it was down 11%. The app also started seeing an overall decline before Mark Zuckerberg’s app hit the market with Twitter traffic down 4% year over year in June, Similarweb reports.
Another sign of Twitter’s rocky outlook comes from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who tweeted a graphic showing Twitter’s quick descent in the rankings Monday. Cloudflare’s ranking is a popularity metric that’s “best described as the estimated number of unique users that access a domain over some period of time,” according to Cloudflare’s website.
Twitter traffic tanking. https://t.co/KSIXqNsu40 pic.twitter.com/mLlbuXVR6r
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) July 9, 2023
At the beginning of the year, Twitter consistently ranked in the top 35 domains being used, according to Cloudflare rankings. It started dropping in February, and today it appears to be stuck in the 37 to 40 range, below websites like bing.com and Google Analytics.
“There’s so much excitement and momentum right now around Threads, and the timing of the launch was opportune, in terms of users being frustrated with Twitter, that it makes sense that there is sort of a slowdown in Twitter usage right now with people migrating to Threads,” said Jasmine Enberg, a principal analyst at Insider Intelligence.
It’s not the first sign of Twitter’s usage slowing, and people are clearly frustrated with “chaos and ad hoc changes” around Twitter, Enberg told Fortune.
“I don’t think this is a death blow to Twitter. But it certainly has been a major blow to the platform,” Enberg said.
Users are enjoying the simplicity and back-to-basics feel of Threads, but the challenge for Meta lies in retaining users, which requires innovation to keep users engaged and active.
“The key at Meta will be to keep up the momentum to retain those users and keep them engaged on the platform. It had a stellar user acquisition strategy, and the early momentum has been meteoric, but it’s not clear how long that will last,” Enberg said.
There’s a potential future where Threads is a lighter, content-oriented platform, while Twitter is the hard news and politics-based feed. But both companies will have to work to create this differentiated competition.
“[Elon] Musk and [CEO Linda] Yaccarino really have until Threads starts monetizing to fix Twitter’s ad business and innovate on the platform to make it a place where users still want to be,” Enberg said.
In regards to the news, a Meta spokesperson pointed to Zuckerberg’s most recent post on Threads.
“Threads reached 100 million sign-ups over the weekend. That’s mostly organic demand, and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. Can’t believe it’s only been five days!” Zuckerberg writes.
Twitter responded with an automatic reply.
These numbers are the first to show Twitter’s outlook, but skepticism toward the app has been common in the past year as the platform faced repeated criticism over owner Musk’s frequent changes, such as adding subscriptions and accessibility tiers.
Meta’s strategy to grab a user base from thin air by making Threads an extension of Instagram seems to have worked. It may be the better-run, “saner” version of Twitter that Meta hopes for. Threads still hasn’t launched in Europe owing to EU privacy law.
Musk seems to be taking the news lightly, tweeting Monday that “you will get more laughs from this app than everything else combined. But I have to warn you…don’t be shocked…there’s some negative stuff too.”
