Is Threads A Threat To Twitter? The Stats Say Yes!

Date: August 17, 2023

Threads is a social media platform that was recently launched by Meta as a direct competitor to Twitter. The exponential growth of Threads’ users in such a short period is already impacting the top spot of Twitter.

The freshly launched Threads app by Meta, is gaining explosive traction of a whopping 100 million user count in just 7 days, and still counting. Experts say that it has the potential to eliminate Twitter from the market altogether if the growth graph does not slow down soon.

But why is Threads’ growth affecting Twitter’s traffic?

Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, there have been multiple instances where users ranging from normal tweeters to elite blue-tick celebrities have faced some kind of negative experience. Whether it is the overnight removal of all blue ticks or something else, Twitter has already lost the positive loyalty it used to have.

There is a sharp dip in the user count of Twitter by 5% in just the last 2 days. Matthew Prince, CEO of DNS service Cloudflare, recently shared a graph on Twitter showing the rapidly declining traffic trend on Twitter.

Other indicators of the fall of Twitter’s popularity come from a recent poll from Ipsos stating:

• 58% of American twitter users are likely to try or have already tried Threads.
• 46% American twitter users are about to or have already moved their preference of social activity from Twitter to Threads.

However, the trend is not against Twitter entirely.

Another survey conducted by Ipsos found that more than 50% existing American twitter users are showing disinterest in moving to Threads. This means that the platform still has enough loyalty to sustain its leadership in the long-term.

Considering the average time spent on Threads Vs Twitter, another data states that Twitter has held a steady engagement post Threads’ launch, while the overall average time spent by users on Threads has dipped.

Since July 6th, Threads has seen a decline of 60% and 85% in time spent by users during the weekend as compared to Twitter and Instagram respectively.

Also, remember the Google+ platform?

It surprised everyone by gaining 100 million users in less than one year, and that too over a decade ago. But, the sad reality of the platform was that it could not sustain the fame it gained leading to it becoming just another use-case story for Unicorn brands to prevent mistakes.

It is still early to conclude whether Threads will grow enough to overpower the global stature of Twitter. The platform being a combination of Twitter, Reddit and Instagram has great potential to become the next big social media sensation, but we will have to wait at least till the next quarter to gather enough data that supports forecast analytics and related insights on its growth.