Meta’s Threads App Crosses 130 Million Monthly Active Users

Threads, Meta’s Twitter killer has now crossed 130 million monthly active users, Mark Zuckerberg announced during the company’s Q4 2023 earnings yesterday (via TechCrunch). When the app launched in July 2023, it crossed 100 million users in just five days, but Threads didn’t launch in Europe until December.

“I’ll note that Threads now has more people actively using it today than it did during its initial launch peak,” Zuckerberg said yesterday. “So that one’s I think on track to be a major success.”

Threads was built by the Instagram team, and the app requires an Instagram account for signup. This makes it easy to find people you already follow on Instagram, and there’s already some cross-pollination happening with Threads posts appearing on Instagram and Facebook.

As of today, Threads is probably the most credible alternative to Twitter/X, but the app is still pretty basic. As an example, you can’t organize accounts you follow into lists, and it’s also not possible to see trending topics on the platform. However, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said earlier this week that the team is “working on surfacing trends.”

Overall, the Threads userbase remains minuscule compared to the 3.98 billion monthly active users Meta now has across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. However, there’s definitely some room for a micro-blogging platform that isn’t plagued by the bots and toxicity issues that Twitter/X has. Threads is also doing something unique with ActivityPub support, which will make posts from Threads accounts available on Mastodon and other platforms that use the decentralized social networking protocol.