Continued Decline: Threads’ Active Users Plunge Further

**Meta’s Threads Losing Daily Active Users Rapidly**

People are seemingly turning their back on Meta’s Threads nearly as fast as they flocked to it. A report in the Wall Street Journal, citing data from Sensor Tower, says the number of daily active users is now down 70% from its peak on July 7, with just 13 million actively engaging with the platform. This follows a report from SimilarWeb that saw the number of daily active users dropping from 49 million to 23.6 million in just a week. Compiling data from the two reports indicates a 45% additional drop in active users in the past week.

**Declining User Engagement on Threads**

Even users who are active on Threads are spending less time on the platform. Sensor Tower data shows the average time spent has dropped from 19 minutes to just four minutes on iOS and from 21 minutes to five minutes on Android devices. It is important to note that Threads is currently geared toward mobile devices and does not have a desktop client. In comparison, Twitter users have remained steady at 200 million.

**Mark Zuckerberg’s Response to the Drop-Off**

Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have not reacted to the new numbers from Sensor Tower, but on Monday, Zuckerberg addressed the drop-off, saying it was expected and he anticipates user numbers will stabilize in the coming months. He wrote, “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily. That’s way ahead of what we expected. The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention. It’ll take time to stabilize, but once we nail that then we’ll focus on growing the community. We’ve run this playbook many times (FB, IG, Stories, Reels, etc) and I’m confident Threads is on a good path too.”

**New Features to Retain Users**

The Threads app’s feed, on Thursday, posted a video of Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri listing new features the app plans to roll out in the near future to help retain users. These features include post editing, a following feed, post search and hashtags, along with a Web presence. It remains to be seen how effective these new features will be in reversing the declining trend of user engagement on Threads.

Overall, Meta’s Threads has experienced a significant decline in daily active users and average time spent on the platform. This raises concerns about the long-term viability of the app and its ability to compete with other social media platforms. However, Mark Zuckerberg remains optimistic about the future of Threads and believes that with improvements in basics and retention, the community will grow. The introduction of new features may also play a crucial role in attracting and retaining users on the platform.