Threads becomes the fastest app to surpass 150 MILLION downloads and already has a quarter of the active users of its direct rival Twitter

Mark Zuckerberg’s new competitor on Twitter, Threads, has not only broken subscription records, but the site also seems to keep many of those users active.

A new data analysis suggests that Threads, which is based on Meta’s Instagram user base, already has a quarter of Twitter’s weekly active user figures, logging approximately 93 million globally active users in its first run. week compared to 353 million on Twitter.

It’s another victory for the site, which it amassed over 150 million global downloads in just six days after its release and has been dubbed the Twitter killer.

Daily, weekly, and monthly ‘active users’ are a metric used by internet analytics companies to differentiate between the number of people who actually visit or interact with a given site or app, and those who simply signed up but have an inactive account. .

Threads has already far surpassed Twitter’s closest previous US rival, former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social, and the new site now boasts 86 times the weekly active user base of Trump’s conservative microblogging platform.

Threads reached 10 million users within hours of its launch on July 6, 2023. By the end of its first week online, the microblogging app had amassed 109 million users worldwide.

But the news has not been entirely positive for Meta’s new social network.

The novelty seems to be wearing off for some early adopters of Threads: Time spent on the platform has dropped by 50 percent over the past week, from 20 minutes of usage to just 10 minutes.

And that trend seems to be true for the more famous users of Threads as well. Of the 20 most followed Twitter accounts, only nine have also created a Threads account, and not all of those nine accounts have bothered to post to the new service even once.

The new data processing reports come from application intelligence companies. data.ai and sensor toweras told to CNBC.

According to Sensor Tower’s app tracking, Threads’ daily active users were down early last week, down about 20 percent on Tuesday and Wednesday from the site’s Saturday heights.

To put that in perspective, it took Twitter a full five years, not just weeks, to get to the 75 to 93 million active user range that Threads is already managing.

In addition, the Total Global Download Threads record continues to break speed and volume records.

Threads reached 150 million global downloads 5.5. times faster than the previous record holder, Niantic’s Pokémon Go, which debuted to a cultural frenzy when it first became available in July 2016.

India has now contributed 33 percent of the global total of Threads downloads, more than distant second Brazil (22 percent) and third US (16 percent). India had previously been the second largest Twitter community in terms of monthly active users and total downloads.

Threads has broken huge industry records by reaching a million users in just a few hours.

Of the 20 most followed Twitter accounts, which include individuals and organizations, only nine have also created a Threads account. Not all of those nine accounts are active on

In a sign of the global exodus, Twitter has seen the most significant volume of defectors from Threads from India, which had previously been Twitter’s second largest community in terms of monthly active users and total downloads.

India has now contributed 33 percent of the global total of Threads downloads, far more new users than distant second Brazil with 22 percent of the global total and third-placed United States, which contributed 16 percent.

Mexico and Japan have also contributed significantly to the record numbers for Threads, contributing 8 and 5 percent of total downloads, respectively.

And this pace is likely to continue as Meta manages to iron out the regulatory snags that have kept the new app out of the European Union due to privacy concerns and Meta’s troubled history with data collection.

Despite government policies, Europeans have been clamoring to make the jump to Threads, forcing Meta itself to identify and block any user in the EU who tries to download and enjoy Threads by hiding their EU IP addresses through of a virtual private network (VPN).

Privacy settings are just one of many releases Meta has planned to keep up the historic momentum of Threads.

Just a few days ago, Threads released its first major update that expands the app’s compatibility with Apple’s iOS 17, along with other tweaks.

Threads is also rumored to be adding an edit button, not unlike Musk’s Twitter; full support for users managing multiple accounts; and a following feed in the near future.

But perhaps its biggest game changer is Threads’ promised integration with Twitter’s other microblogging rivals, like Mastodon, which are built on the open, decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub.

The new report from data.ai was quick to point out that despite declining user activity, the rapid growth of Threads has been historic.

“While the world’s top social apps have weekly active user counts starting in the 500 million-year range of their life cycles,” according to your insights report. ‘Threads attracting almost 100 million WAU [weekly active users] during this initial period is unprecedented.’

The app data firm said Threads reached its current high of roughly 93 million active users worldwide just before Meta’s official announcement on July 10 that the new social platform had reached the 100 milestone. millions of subscriptions.