2023-08-16 10:55:00
Imposing a new social network is not so easy, even for Mark Zuckerberg. Despite a fanfare launch on July 5 and more than 100 million subscribers in just five days – ChatGPT’s record literally exploded – Threads, the new social network supposed to dethrone X (ex-Twitter) from the Meta group (Facebook, Instagram , WhatsApp), is struggling to keep up.
According to internet traffic analyst firm Similarweb, Threads usage fell 79% as of August 7, just over a month after its launch. In other words, almost 8 out of 10 people who have downloaded the application no longer use it. Despite 124 million downloads worldwide – the app is not yet available in the European Union due to legal issues – Similarweb estimates the number of daily active users at 10.3 million as of 7 August, barely 8.3% of registered voters. The drop is drastic: Threads peaked on July 7, the third day after launch, with 49.3 million active users. A week later, on July 14, the new social network had already lost half of its users. Now, he has kept only 20%.
Another disappointment: user engagement, that is to say the time they spend on the site, also continues to fall. This crucial indicator, which reveals the success of apps, fell from 21 minutes a day on July 7, to 6 minutes a week later. As of August 7, it has again been halved, to 3 minutes per day. Starving. And again, these engagement numbers were measured only in the United States… Threads’ most dynamic market.
Threads, the “Twitter killer” of Meta and its 30 million users in two days, panicked Elon Musk
Threads has yet to prove its relevance
The question arises: can Mark Zuckerberg contain the bleeding? For now, Threads is less a success than yet another illustration of the ruthless law of social networks. To succeed, a new service must know how to create enthusiasm around it, to constantly recruit new users, in order to reach a critical size that makes it essential. The power of a social network comes from the network effect, that is to say when it becomes essential to register there, because all your friends are there and stay there.
Mark Zuckerberg, who has already experienced this rare success three times with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp instant messaging, has understood this well. That’s why he decided to interweave Threads with his flagship social network, Instagram, which claims more than 2 billion monthly active users. Threads was started as “ an Instagram app “, to the point where it is possible to register in one click, keeping your Instagram identifiers for both services, and with the possibility of importing your Instagram contacts into Threads, rather than starting from a blank sheet. This trick got Threads off to a historic start, with one million signups the first hour, five million on day one, fifty million by the end of day two, and 100 million by the start of day five. An unprecedented feat in the history of the Internet: ChatGPT, OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence which held the record for the service which had reached the symbolic bar of 100 million subscribers the fastest, needed two months!
But like the hare and the tortoise in Jean de La Fontaine’s fable, a hot start does not guarantee going the distance. In the world of social networks, it is necessary to bring a real disruption in the uses to convert the curious into daily and assiduous users. Facebook did it in its time, just like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or even TikTok, thanks to a concept and features that were new and attractive at the time. In other words, the power of Instagram is certainly a great help for Threads, but the new social network will have to convince on its own merits to also become a success.
However, this is where the shoe pinches for Threads. The service is perceived, for the moment, only as an alternative to X (the new name of Twitter since the end of July), or even an extension of Instagram. Not enough to maintain the craze. Once the discovery has passed, without any eye-catching and novel element, many users “forget” to reconnect regularly, and the application becomes one of the many unused icons on the phone. Threads still has everything to prove. And it is still far from competing with X despite the setbacks of Elon Musk: the former blue bird claims 237.8 million daily active users, for a daily engagement of 25 minutes according to Similarweb.
A different tone, but no real innovation
Still, it would be unfair to cast Threads as a mere copy of X. Rather, it’s a kind of ideal Twitter, with the mindset of Instagram, designed for Elon Musk disillusioned and Instagram fans alike. . Threads wants to be open to the outside – in reality, especially to Instagram for the moment – while Twitter, which has become X, is closing in on itself. Threads keeps the blue checkmarks. Instead, he verifies identity, when X becomes even more than before a fairground populated by bots and anonymous accounts spouting hate and fake news.
At Instagram, Threads stole the notion of “inspiring communities”in order to personalize the content that appears on the news feed to the extreme… and to recover the bonanza that goes with it, because X lost half of Twitter’s turnover under Elon Musk.
“Threads is not Twitter. But it has the potential to become something different and powerful. It’s Twitter, but with fewer problems, more corporate brilliance, and enough potential to suck what’s left of life from Elon Musk’s struggling social network.summarized in early July the British newspaper The Guardian.
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