Threads burst onto the social media scene, but like many other Twitter clones, has struggled to remain relevant with users. Now Meta is planning to add what it calls “retention-driving hooks” to lure them back and keep them there.
At an internal town hall meeting Thursday, which was heard by Reuters, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that more than half of the 100 million people who signed up for Threads had not stuck around. Describing this drop-off as “normal,” he said he expects many to return as Threads adds more features, such as search and a desktop version.
Chief Product Officer Chris Cox added to this, saying Threads was looking at adding the so-called hooks such as “making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads.”
In that same meeting, Zuckerberg gave a timeline for when he believes the metaverse will be “ready for prime time,” saying he expects mass adoption to take place in the 2030s. Meta’s Reality Labs, which is heading up the VR and metaverse program, has lost $21 billion in the past 18 months and $34 billion life to date.
The drop-off in Threads users has been cliff-like. Data from Sensor Tower a week ago said the number of daily active users was down 70% from its peak on July 7, with just 13 million actively engaging with the platform. The average time spent has dropped from 19 minutes to just four minutes on iOS and from 21 minutes to five minutes on Android devices. (Threads is currently geared toward mobile devices and does not have a desktop client.)
Zuckerberg has not commented publicly about the Threads drop-off since July 17, when he wrote “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily. That’s way ahead of what we expected. The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention. It’ll take time to stabilize, but once we nail that then we’ll focus on growing the community. We’ve run this playbook many times (FB, IG, Stories, Reels, etc) and I’m confident Threads is on a good path too.”