Threads Crosses 175 Million Monthly Active Users After Just a Year

Threads, Meta’s alternative to Twitter/X has crossed 175 million monthly active users ahead of its first anniversary on July 5. That’s an impressive number for a new app launching in an already crowded space, though Threads benefited from its close integration with Instagram, which already has over 2 billion monthly active users.

In a long interview with Platformer, the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri looked back at all the progress his team has made since Threads launched a year ago. The exec also said that Meta’s ultimate goal with Threads is to build a platform that’s bigger than Elon Musk’s X.

“I’m really proud of the work we’ve done. And I’m also really real about how much more work there is to do. But I want to build the best platform for sharing ideas online. That means getting bigger than Twitter or X. That will take some time, but I will consider it a failure if we don’t get there,” Mosserri said.

One year of Threads and 175 million monthly actives later, we can’t wait to see what the next year has in store. ? pic.twitter.com/RukA0gloIy

— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) July 3, 2024

If you currently need an Instagram account to create a Threads profile, this requirement may eventually go away. “We’re working on things like Threads-only accounts and data separation. As we iterate on the product, it’s gonna differentiate more and more,” the head of Instagram explained.

There are obviously a lot of similarities between Threads and X/Twitter, but Meta’s app has recently embraced the fediverse: This means that Threads users in over 100 countries can cross-post on other platforms like Mastodon and WordPress that support the fediverse. Ultimately, Threads users will also be able to follow accounts from the fediverse in Threads and get followers from other fediverse-enabled platforms.

Mosserri admitted that the fediverse is “a long-term bet” and that it ”isn’t driving a lot of Threads growth.” However, a company with the scale of Meta supporting open social networking protocols is quite unprecedented. And it’s quite antithetical to the fact that Meta’s other big social networks, Facebook and Instagram, still work like walled gardens.

If Threads currently has no ads, The Verge is reporting today that there are internal discussions about launching ads “sometime next year.” While this had to be expected to make Threads sustainable financially, the report says that a precise plan for rolling out ads hasn’t been formalized yet.