Topline
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated Thursday that Threads, the company’s answer to Twitter, has been unable to retain more than half the users who signed up for the platform in its first week, Reuters reported, once again highlighting falling engagement metrics for the Instagram offshoot became the fastest growing app of all time after launch.
Meta’s Threads has seen a major slump in engagement after record breaking launch earlier this month.
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Key Facts
Citing an audio recording from a company town hall, Reuters reported that Zuckerberg told Meta staffers Threads’ user retention metrics were “not perfect” although they are better than the company’s executives initially expected.
“Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the platform was not “there yet.”
The Meta CEO’s remarks imply that Threads has lost more than half of its users since its record-breaking launch—in line with external estimates.
Facebook plans to reverse this by adding “retention-driving hooks” like displaying “important Threads” on the Instagram app as well, the company’s Chief Product Officer Chris Cox told staffers, the report added.
Big Number
70%. That is how much user engagement on Threads had fallen two weeks after its launch, according to data released by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower last Friday. Daily active users on the site dropped to around 13 million users, down from 44 million in the week it launched while average time spent on the app dropped from 19 minutes to four.
Key Background
To arrest this slump, Threads has been adding a set of highly requested features to bring it on par with Twitter. The biggest of these additions has been a “following feed” which displays posts only from accounts a user follows in chronological order—with the most recent posts appearing on top. Other additions include translations and ways to filter notifications. A key promised feature that is yet to arrive is a desktop or web version of the app. At present Threads is only usable through its mobile apps on iPhone and Android devices. Days after the app’s launch, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri commented on the lack of many of these features: “It’s always a delicate balance between features and time. We wanted to get more done, but we’re starting to worry that the window of opportunity was closing on us.”
Further Reading
Meta plans retention ‘hooks’ for Threads as more than half of users leave app (Reuters)
Threads’ User Engagement Plummets After Explosive Start (Forbes)
Here Are The Twitter-Like Features Meta Is Adding To Threads—From Edit Buttons To ‘Following’ Feeds (Forbes)
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