Meta’s Threads is officially the fastest growing online platform of all time surpassing 100 million sign ups in five days. This passes ChatGPT’s take-up which broke the record just last year. According to Unison Asset Management, Threads is officially a threat to microblogging giant Twitter (X) which, as of last year, had 240 million daily active users.
Alex Furmanski, partner with Unison Asset Management, points out that since the launch of Threads Twitter’s traffic has been down -11% over the prior year.
While not the first platform to challenge Twitter, Threads is the first rival platform to reach a critical mass of users.
Furmanski says: “The shocking success of Threads has come despite the lack of crucial features such as a desktop version, direct messaging, hashtags, and keyword search functions which are important to businesses, individuals, and advertisers.
“Meta’s strategy around Threads is to keep steadily adding features and not monetise the platform till they reach 1 billion users at a minimum. This is likely to pressure Twitter to respond with changes to their monetisation plans, to keep users from splitting their time between both platforms.
“Meta can play the long game and keep Threads un-monetised since Facebook and Instagram generate billions of dollars in profits annually, unlike Twitter which has struggled to turn a profit historically.
“Meta has shown its propensity as an industry copy-cat with the creation of Instagram Stories and Reels in response to the growing popularity of Snap Chat and TikTok. History is repeating itself here once again with Meta replicating Twitter by strengthening its family of apps network and increasing their value to advertisers and users across the globe.”
