‘Threads’, Facebook’s “sanely run” Twitter rival, has experienced a staggering decline in user engagement, with daily active user count down 82 percent from launch as of July 31. Once boasting an impressive 44 million daily active users, the app, has seen those numbers fall head-long to just eight million, in an astonishingly short amount of time.
As of July 31 CNN reports that, the number of daily active users on Facebook’s new social network ‘Threads’ was down 82 percent from when it first launched. In fact, Threads’ daily active user count is now the lowest it has been since the day after the app’s release.
‘Threads’ users, on its launch day, opened the app an average of 14 times and spent an average of 19 minutes scrolling through it. However, these figures have fallen sharply. Further, the decline in user engagement has been consistent since the app’s launch.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains optimistic about the app’s future, despite the concerning numbers. He said last month, on the company’s earnings call-
“We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and more importantly we’re seeing more people coming back daily than I’d expected. And now, we’re focused on retention and improving the basics. And then after that, we’ll focus on growing the community to the scale we think is possible.”
-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
‘Threads’ was launched with only a handful of features, and later promised to add in highly requested tools like a reverse-chronological content feed, a desktop version of the app, and direct messages. In July reportedly, Zuckerberg announced that more than 100 million people had signed up for the App making it one of the fastest-growing apps in history.
However, reportedly, management is now looking into adding “retention-driving hooks” that can keep users engaged, as new data shows that decline is ongoing. The “Threads’ daily active user count is still falling at a rate of roughly one percent per day. The falling numbers may stall out, however an 82% drop in daily active user engagement is very plainly a lot to lose.
“Build it, and they will come” only works in the movies. Social Media is a “build it, nurture it, engage them and they may come and stay.”
-Seth Godin, Founder, Squidoo