Is Threads unraveling already?

Elon Musk changing Twitter to X has been dominating the tech news cycle. But the bigger story is how Meta’s Threads (Mark Zuckerberg’s new microblogging alternative) went from a supposed Twitter killer to a failure since the app launched on July 5. 

In its first few days, Threads gained an unprecedented 100 million-plus users. Twitter, the original microblogging platform that currently has 353 million users and has been around since 2006, took nearly two years to reach 1 million users. However, 2023 isn’t 2006, and the initial excitement about Threads has been short-lived.

Threads’s daily active users dropped from 49 million on its best day, on July 7, to 23 million just one week later, according to an estimate from the web analytics and traffic performance company Similarweb. Even with Meta’s billions of dollars behind Threads, how did this happen?

I have some ideas.

I was one of the first 400,000 users on this new app, which was supposed to replace Twitter — much like the way Parler, Bluesky, Truth Social and Mastodon were poised to be the next microblogging social media platforms.

Threads basically started off as a beta application and a cheap Twitter knockoff with fewer features. There was no desktop version, no hashtags, no direct messaging option, no visible analytics, and users had no idea which topics were trending on the app. Instead, the Threads timeline was built around Meta’s algorithm, with users seeing what Meta wanted them to see (which, for me, was often people I didn’t follow, or repurposed Instagram and Twitter content from the people I did follow). 

Meta did update Threads on July 25, adding a “following” tab so users could see posts in chronological order, as well as a way to sort notifications and activity by follows, replies, mentions, quotes, and reposts. The problem is, none of these additions are useful unless the people you follow are active on the app or you have followers engaging with your content.

Also, Threads is more like Facebook than Twitter. On Twitter, my timeline is mostly news and influencers in politics, sports, and entertainment; it is a one-to-many platform that acts like a public square. Threads is more of a one-to-network app like Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook, where a user’s timeline includes accounts that they already follow or accounts that Meta’s algorithm has pigeonholed them into liking. But I don’t care about the political rants of someone from high school, so why would I want to be on Threads to see their same content I’ve been avoiding on Facebook? 

In essence, Threads is just one more example of Meta attempting to replicate what someone else has made rather than creating something new. Remember when Instagram added Stories to compete with Snapchat, Reels to compete with TikTok, and IGTV to compete with YouTube? Facebook has a similar history of failed copycat features. Facebook Deals was an attempt to replicate sites like Groupon, Facebook Messages was an attempt to create a Facebook email to compete with Gmail, and Facebook Places was an attempt to create a check-in option to compete with Foursquare.

Do any of us really have time for another social media app, much less a bad one? According to BankMyCell, the average American spends seven hours and five minutes each day looking at screens, including two hours and 27 minutes just on social media. We are creatures of habit who like the apps we like, and there is only so much time in the day to devote to new ones.

Threads did get a lot of early attention, but I don’t think it was because people were really excited about the app; they only wanted Threads to succeed to see Elon Musk fail. When Threads launched, there were several posts about how Musk was scared of Threads, and there was excitement around the assumption that Musk was about to lose more money from buying Twitter. It reminded me of the Regina George quote from the movie “Mean Girls” — I wanted to post in response, “Stop trying to make Threads happen.”

But I don’t think Musk and X are scared of Threads anymore. Daily app activity is down, and only a fraction of the 2.35 billion Instagram users have made it over to Threads. To quote Boromir in “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” “It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing, such a little thing.” 

Andrew Selepak, Ph.D. is a social media professor in the Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology at the University of Florida (UF), who researches media psychology and pop culture.