"We're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected," Zuckerberg said.
JON BRODKIN - 7/28/2023
Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, is looking for ways to keep users interested after more than half of the people who signed up for the text-based platform stopped actively using the app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in a company town hall yesterday. Threads launched on July 5 and signed up over 100 million users in less than five days, buoyed by user frustration with Elon Musk-owned Twitter.
"Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," Zuckerberg told employees yesterday, according to Reuters, which listened to audio of the event.
Third-party data suggests that Threads may have lost many more than half of its active users. Daily active users for Threads on Android dropped from 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14, and then to 12.6 million on July 23, web analytics company SimilarWeb reported.
"We don't yet have daily numbers for iOS, but we suspect the boom-and-bust pattern is similar," SimilarWeb wrote. "Threads took off like a rocket, with its close linkage to Instagram as the booster. However, the developers of Threads will need to fill in missing features and add some new and unique ones if they want to make checking the app a daily habit for users."
Although losing over half of the initial users in a short period might sound discouraging, the Reuters article said Zuckerberg told employees that user retention was better than Meta executives expected. "Zuckerberg said he considered the drop-off 'normal' and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality," Reuters wrote.
Chief Product Officer Chris Cox also spoke at the company event, reportedly saying that Meta is considering "retention-driving hooks" such as "making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads." Threads is part of Meta's Instagram platform, so users can create a Threads profile as part of their Instagram account.Advertisement
Zuck: Threads still needs “basic functionality”
When contacted by Ars today, a Meta spokesperson pointed to Zuckerberg's comments from Wednesday's earnings call. Zuckerberg said:
On Threads, briefly, I'm quite optimistic about our trajectory. We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and more importantly we're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected. And now, we're focused on retention and improving the basics. And then after that, we'll focus on growing the community to the scale we think is possible. Only after that will we work on monetization. We've run this playbook many times before—with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Stories, Reels, and more—and this is as good of a start as we could have hoped for, so I'm really happy with the path we're on here.
Zuckerberg also told investors that "Threads has been dramatically more than we expected in terms of the adoption and the rate of that... we had a small team working on [it] for a while, but it really kind of blew up and created a big opportunity immediately."
Zuckerberg said "there's still a lot of basic functionality to build" for Threads and talked briefly about the challenge of attracting users to new standalone apps. "We've tried a bunch of standalone experiences over time, and in general, we haven't had a lot of success with building kind of standalone apps," he said.
Threads could succeed in part because of user backlash to Musk's changes at Twitter, now officially called "X," Zuckerberg seemed to suggest. "It could just be that this is such an idiosyncratic case because of all of the factors that are happening around Twitter or X, I guess, it's called now," he said.
Threads is available in about 100 countries, including the US and UK, but is not in the European Union yet because of concerns over compliance with EU regulations. Threads has drawn privacy-related criticisms because of the amount of personal data collected by the app.
Mark Zuckerberg Admits More Than Half Of Users Have Left Threads
Tom Jowitt, July 28, 2023
Honeymoon for Twitter rival Threads is over, but Meta Platforms plans “retention-driving hooks” for the messaging app
Meta Platforms plans to make its recently launched Twitter rival, Threads, much more ‘sticky’ to help retain its shrinking user base.
Reuters said it had listened into an internal town hall meeting between Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and staff, in which he admitted the honeymoon phase of Threads was now over.
Earlier this month Meta Platforms had launched its long awaited Threads app, to much fanfare from disgruntled Twitter users unhappy at Elon Musk’s controversial ownership of the platform.
Threads usage
Indeed, Threads witnessed surging user demand soon after its launch, and it quickly grew its users to 112 million .
The app has also recently been updated.
But now Mark Zuckerberg during the conference call with staff on Thursday, said the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its launch, Reuters reported.
That said, retention of users on the text-based app was better than executives had expected, though it was “not perfect,” Zuckerberg reportedly said.
“Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” he said.
Zuckerberg reportedly said he considered the drop-off “normal” and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality.
Meanwhile Chief Product Officer Chris Cox was quoted as saying that Meta is looking at adding more “retention-driving hooks” to entice users to return to the app, like “making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads.”
Zuckerberg also told employees on the call that he believed the company’s work on the augmented and virtual reality tech that would power the metaverse was “not massively ahead of schedule, but on track.”
The comments came a day after Meta pleased investors with a rosy revenue growth forecast, as well as a bump in advertising spend.
Elon Musk fight
During the call with staff, Zuckerberg reportedly responded to a question on the proposed “cage match” against Elon Musk, who had challenged him to a public fight which Zuckerberg accepted.
Tom Jowitt, July 28, 2023
Honeymoon for Twitter rival Threads is over, but Meta Platforms plans “retention-driving hooks” for the messaging app
Meta Platforms plans to make its recently launched Twitter rival, Threads, much more ‘sticky’ to help retain its shrinking user base.
Reuters said it had listened into an internal town hall meeting between Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and staff, in which he admitted the honeymoon phase of Threads was now over.
Earlier this month Meta Platforms had launched its long awaited Threads app, to much fanfare from disgruntled Twitter users unhappy at Elon Musk’s controversial ownership of the platform.
Threads usage
Indeed, Threads witnessed surging user demand soon after its launch, and it quickly grew its users to 112 million .
The app has also recently been updated.
But now Mark Zuckerberg during the conference call with staff on Thursday, said the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its launch, Reuters reported.
That said, retention of users on the text-based app was better than executives had expected, though it was “not perfect,” Zuckerberg reportedly said.
“Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” he said.
Zuckerberg reportedly said he considered the drop-off “normal” and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality.
Meanwhile Chief Product Officer Chris Cox was quoted as saying that Meta is looking at adding more “retention-driving hooks” to entice users to return to the app, like “making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads.”
Zuckerberg also told employees on the call that he believed the company’s work on the augmented and virtual reality tech that would power the metaverse was “not massively ahead of schedule, but on track.”
The comments came a day after Meta pleased investors with a rosy revenue growth forecast, as well as a bump in advertising spend.
Elon Musk fight
During the call with staff, Zuckerberg reportedly responded to a question on the proposed “cage match” against Elon Musk, who had challenged him to a public fight which Zuckerberg accepted.
Image credit: Elon Musk
Zuckerberg said he was “not sure if it’s going to come together.”
Certainly the bad blood between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg is notable.
X Corp’s (owner of Twitter) lawyer Alex Spiro recently threatened to sue Meta in a letter to Zuckerberg, accusing Meta of the “wilful” misappropriation of trade secrets.
In the letter, Spiro alleged that Meta’s Threads was built by former Twitter employees “deliberately assigned” to develop a “copycat” app.
However Meta has been developing Threads since August 2019, but it does have its work cut out for it, if it seeks to topple Twitter (now known as X).
Twitter was known to have 229 million monthly active users as of May 2022 – the last time the firm publicly disclosed such a figure.
But last November Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter had around 260 million monetisable daily active users.
Mastodon meanwhile is said to have 1.7 million monthly active users, while Bluesky has surpassed 1 million downloads.
Zuckerberg said he was “not sure if it’s going to come together.”
Certainly the bad blood between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg is notable.
X Corp’s (owner of Twitter) lawyer Alex Spiro recently threatened to sue Meta in a letter to Zuckerberg, accusing Meta of the “wilful” misappropriation of trade secrets.
In the letter, Spiro alleged that Meta’s Threads was built by former Twitter employees “deliberately assigned” to develop a “copycat” app.
However Meta has been developing Threads since August 2019, but it does have its work cut out for it, if it seeks to topple Twitter (now known as X).
Twitter was known to have 229 million monthly active users as of May 2022 – the last time the firm publicly disclosed such a figure.
But last November Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter had around 260 million monetisable daily active users.
Mastodon meanwhile is said to have 1.7 million monthly active users, while Bluesky has surpassed 1 million downloads.
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