Sensor Tower: The number of daily active users of Threads from July 11 to 12, 2023 has dropped by about 20% compared with the same period on the 8th

Threads has bad news. Research firm Sensor Tower said that the number of daily active users on the platform from November 12 to 12 has dropped by about 20% compared to the same period on the 8th, and the user usage time has almost been "cut in half", from 20 minutes to 10 minutes now. SimilarWeb's latest data also reflects a similar trend. As of July 10, the time spent by US users on Threads has decreased from about 20 minutes on July 6 to about 8 minutes on July 10.

This is in stark contrast to the sensational debut of Threads. On July 6, Meta launched Threads, which attracted more than 100 million users to register within 5 days and was called Twitter's "most powerful competitor."

Zuckerberg was beaming at Threads, announcing good news about Threads again and again, and interacting with celebrities who came to support him. Musk repeatedly mocked Zuckerberg on Twitter, even calling him a "coward/cuck" and sending a lawyer's letter to Zuckerberg, accusing Meta of stealing trade secrets.

However, within just one week, many people no longer actively open Threads, and even if they do, the time they stay on the site is getting shorter.

The cooling off of Threads is everywhere. Jeff Bezos was the first to come to the platform and frequently posted and retweeted content in the first few days, but in the last three days, he has only retweeted and posted one message each.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted only one message: "OK fun, great first day of summer camp atmosphere." Since then, the fun platform has not attracted Altman to post or retweet anything, although he is active on Twitter.

This is a dangerous signal for a new platform.

“The strongest competitor”, will it end up being just a short-lived digital meteor?

Let's start with a story: Once upon a time, a large technology company with billions of users launched a new social product. The company wanted to use its existing popularity and scale to make the new product successful. In doing so, it also planned to suppress a leading competitor.

Look familiar? Don’t get me wrong, this is not the story of Meta launching Threads, but the story of Google launching Google+ 12 years ago.

In 2011, Google launched the "Facebook killer" app Google+ and used its powerful search and email services to push new products to users. In the first year, Google+ attracted 90 million users.

But after that, the popularity of Google+ continued to decline, and the entire product became a "ghost town" with only users. In 2019, Google officially announced the closure of Google+.

Throughout Silicon Valley’s history, large tech companies have often sought to use their scale as an inherent advantage, snowballing into further growth. But as the story of Google+ shows, scale alone is no guarantee of victory in the ever-changing social media wars.

More than a decade later, the parent company of Facebook, which was challenged at the time, has changed its name to Meta and has also become a technology giant with a market value of more than $700 billion and more than 100,000 employees.

In January this year, Meta launched a project called Project 92 to develop a product to compete with Twitter, which will be affiliated with its Instagram.

Facebook, once targeted by the giant Google, is now targeting Twitter as a giant.

Meta has the same confidence as Google. Instagram alone has more than 1 billion users, while Twitter has only 230 million users. As long as they do a good job of attracting traffic, it seems that it will not be difficult to surpass the latter in scale.

Zuckerberg does need some wins. In 2021, Zuckerberg went all in on the Metaverse, even changing the company's name, but the concept has yet to show signs of contributing revenue. Last year, Meta launched its first major layoff in history, and with another round of layoffs in March this year, Meta has laid off more than 20,000 people, severely hitting morale. In early June, Zuckerberg released the company's latest head-mounted display device, Meta Quest3, but it was soon overshadowed by Apple's release of Vision Pro.

Twitter, which he targeted, is small in scale but has a strong appeal. Stars, influential creators, politicians and media organizations all gather here. After Musk bought the company for $44 billion last year, Twitter was in turmoil, exposing its weaknesses like a prey.

Musk and Twitter's own weaknesses, and the scale of Meta itself, are Zuckerberg's two most important fulcrums.

In terms of the timing of release, Threads was originally scheduled to be released in mid-July, but it was put on the Apple App Store ahead of schedule, with an announcement of its release on July 7. The final release time was one day earlier than announced.

The enemy was at its weakest. During those days, Musk was implementing a traffic restriction policy on Twitter to limit the number of daily views of users, which attracted a lot of criticism. This was also the time when the conflict between Musk and Zuckerberg reached its peak after the "cage fight".

In order to take advantage of its scale, Zuckerberg strongly linked Threads with Instagram, allowing users to log in directly with their Instagram accounts and follow everyone they follow on Instagram with one click. This solved the long-standing problem of cold start for new social products and lowered the entry threshold for users.

Sure enough, with the right timing and traffic, Threads became a hit as soon as it was launched. On the first day of Threads' launch, the news feed was filled with memes about Musk and Zuckerberg. As Altman said, it felt like the first day of summer camp: excited and joyful.

The strong association with Instagram gave Threads a strong push. The cold start problem was solved, but it was still far from success.

In fact, before the research institute reported the decline in Threads traffic, it can be seen that Threads' speed on the road to breaking 100 million users has slowed down. When it was first launched, Threads' number of users exceeded 10 million in 7 hours, reached 30 million in 24 hours, and reached 70 million in 48 hours. But it took until the fifth day to break 100 million. In other words, it took about the same time from 70 million to 100 million registered users as it did from 0 to 70 million. Threads' speed has slowed down.

Some of the features of Threads are not very complete, which is the first impression of many users who come to Threads. People post questions: Is there no private message function? Under Zuckerberg's Threads, users frequently wish that some commonly used features on Twitter can be added in the next update, such as private messages, translation, content search, topic tags, etc.

"If you launch an app that's buzzy but not fully functional, it could backfire and you could see a lot of people get driven out the door," said Eric Seufert, an independent mobile analyst who closely follows the Meta app, according to The New York Times.

The more critical issue may not be the function, but the platform tonality of Threads.

Although the media reported that the Threads project was internally designed to compete with Twitter, Zuckerberg frequently made provocative moves after Threads was launched, such as posting two identical Spider-Man memes pointing at each other on his Twitter account, which he hadn't updated in more than a decade, or using Musk's catchphrase "concerning" on Threads.

But the amazing thing is that Threads has taken a completely different stance. Zuckerberg defines Threads as a "friendly" refuge for online public speech: "We are absolutely focused on being friendly and making this a friendly place."

In addition, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, made it clear that the company's goal is to focus on lighter topics such as sports, music, fashion and design. Mosseri also said that news and political content are inevitable, including on Instagram, but the company will not do anything to encourage such content.

Mosley even said that Threads is not intended to replace Twitter.

Looking back at Zuckerberg's experience, it is not difficult to understand this decision. In 2018, Facebook experienced a data breach and was accused of manipulating the US presidential election. This incident caused Zuckerberg to go through several days of rounds of battles in the US Congress. Since then, Facebook (or Meta) has been trying hard to distance itself from news and political content.

To put it bluntly, Zuckerberg wants users and wants to build a platform to compete with Twitter, but he doesn't want some troubles.

This determination can also be seen from Threads' actions in the short week: someone posted a meme saying "Twitter is better than Threads", which was deleted by the platform for "inciting violence"; when a user followed Trump's son's Threads, the platform reminded him, "Are you sure you want to follow? This account repeatedly posts false information." Although Meta later said that these problems had been resolved, it is self-evident what signal this conveys.

But the problem this caused is obvious. Controversial and troublesome content is unfortunately an important source of vitality for social media. After taking over Twitter, Musk unblocked many controversial figures including Donald Trump, and he himself has consistently posted controversial remarks.

The Threads feed is basically another version of Instagram: influencers and brands post pleasing photos, and even tech mogul Bezos posts photos of himself with his cat. After posting a "very interesting" message on Threads, Altman chose to be active on Twitter, criticizing the FTC's investigation into OpenAI.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, wrote an opinion piece criticizing Threads' strategy, saying: "Twitter has never been an information machine. It was and is an emotion machine." "Twitter is designed to intensify anger. Threads is designed to prevent anger. Without anger, what's the point?"

Musk took advantage of this and mocked Threads on Twitter: "Being attacked by strangers on Twitter is much better than indulging in the false happiness of Instagram that masks pain."

Although he mocked Zuckerberg to the utmost, the rapid growth of Threads has already made Musk alert.

In addition to sending a legal letter to Zuckerberg accusing him of stealing trade secrets, Musk is also working to make Twitter more attractive.

On July 14, Twitter launched a "Creator Ad Sharing Program" that allows creators to share ad revenue from tweet replies. Creators need to meet certain conditions to be eligible to participate, including Twitter blue badge verification and at least 5 million post impressions per month in the past three months.

Some Twitter users have shared their experiences of earning money through the program, with one blogger with 750,000 followers saying he received nearly $24,000 in commissions. Another user tweeted a screenshot of a notification of a $4,266 advertising revenue share he received.

Launching the plan at this time is undoubtedly a defense against the threat of Threads.

In addition, Musk suddenly announced the establishment of an artificial intelligence company xAI on July 13, which has been reported for several months. On Twitter, Musk has been holding several live broadcasts non-stop. The voice live broadcast on the 14th was equivalent to a "meet-up" between the company and the public on Twitter, attracting 850,000 listens.

AI is the hottest topic at the moment, but it also involves issues such as regulation, and Threads does not want to touch on content related to regulation. Through xAI, Musk will further focus discussions on related topics on the Twitter platform.

Also on the 14th, Musk tweeted: "It looks like the platform may be seeing the highest second usage in history." Not long after, Musk posted a picture and said: The platform usage increased by 3.5% week-on-week.

It is worth noting that in the weekly chart posted by Musk, there are data from countries around the world, including Europe, but Threads chose not to go online in Europe due to privacy policy issues. This will also greatly compress Threads' growth space.

If the competition between Twitter and Threads is a cage fight between Musk and Zuckerberg, then Zuckerberg won the first round with 100 million registered users in 5 days, and Musk is determined to win the next round.

What’s not in Zuckerberg’s favor is that Musk made mistakes rather than Zuckerberg’s performance in the first round. The opponent may make mistakes in the next round, but preparations cannot be based on this.

As the second round begins, Threads must improve its product features, weigh whether the platform's policy is more beneficial than harmful, and focus on the product itself. At the same time, we expect our opponent, Musk, to continue to make trouble.

Otherwise, Threads is not the next Twitter, but the next Google+: the bright light is just the flame produced by the friction between the meteor and the air, a brief flash before falling.

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