New Delhi:- A Wall Street Journal article on Friday warned that Thread, Instagram's new Twitter competitor, was already losing momentum. Citing third-party data from Sensor Tower, the paper reported that Thread's daily active users fell to 13 million in its second week, down 70% from its peak on July 7.

For comparison: Twitter has approximately 200 million daily active users. Despite this seemingly alarming trend, it's too early to count threads. Other indicators show that the app's user base and prominence in the global market continues to grow, and usage is likely to grow over time as well, especially as the app's feature set improves.

The highly anticipated new app is expected to see great usage numbers in the early stages as users set up accounts, find and follow friends, and test the app's features. As the novelty wears off, it's also common for users to revert to their old ways as they consider whether and how to integrate the new app into their daily lives, resulting in less usage. Furthermore, the WSJ stresses that meta executives expect usage to decline eventually and do not believe they are concerned about this drop in usage.

Also Read:- Meta's Threads App Introduces Auto-Delete Feature for Enhanced Privacy

The Thread is still too new and too incomplete to determine its final fate. Is it possible that even an early record-breaker will fail in the end? Safe. But it can be a true Twitter killer or a mediocre success. It's too early to say that. 

According to app intelligence firm data.ai, Threads launched in global markets (excluding the EU) on July 5 and reached 100 million users within days of launch, making it the app that reached that milestone earlier than Pokémon GO. In his first three days, he accounted for 18.3% of daily active Twitter users. That's 54.4 million Twitter users compared to his 298 million. data.ai estimated that about a fifth of Twitter's weekly active user base was still on the app as of last week.

According to data.ai, installs for the Threads app peaked on July 9, just days after its release, and worldwide he had 24.5 million downloads of the app on his iOS and Android. Although initial enthusiasm has waned, the app has seen over 1 million new downloads per day over the past few days, from 1.76 million on July 16th to 1.06 million on July 20th, for example. Any new app on the market would be happy with such numbers, but Threads may be judged more harshly given that it benefits from network effects created by the extensive resource nature of its parent apps Instagram and Meta.

Also Read:- Meta's Threads App Aims for Personal Connection but Falls Short of Twitter's Appeal

Data.ai estimates that the app currently has a total of 185.32 million downloads worldwide. 

Another important point is that Threads is attractive in emerging mobile markets where downloads are still growing. The United States is only her third largest market, according to data.ai's analysis. On July 17, India and Brazil recorded more installs with 60.1 million (32.6%) and her 40.2 million (21.8%) respectively. 27.8 million downloads, or 15.1%, were delivered in the US. That's why analytics firm Similarweb's analysis of the decline in US Android usage (from 21 minutes on July 7th to 6 minutes on July 14th) doesn't tell the whole story.

Thread usage may be down for now, as Sensor Tower data shows, but early usage numbers showed the company's potential as a Twitter competitor. During its first few days on the market, a Threads user spent an average of 15 minutes on the app per her day, making 9.4 app sessions. According to data.ai, this is higher than the average for microblogging categories including Twitter, Truth Social, Mastodon and Bluesky. As a result, a microblogging user spent an average of 12.5 minutes per day in his 7.8 app sessions.

Also Read:- Meta to get Fined against User Data Breaching

Maybe the reason people are not using Threads these days is not so much the disappointment with the concept of the app itself, but rather the current level of functionality compared to Twitter. Although Threads is now publicly available, it is still effectively a beta or unfinished app that lacks many of the features users have come to expect from a microblogging tool, such as chronological timelines, the ability to follow feeds, display likes, a fully functional web version, edit buttons, and support for multiple accounts. These features are still a work in progress, and Threads integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers his open-source Twitter alternative Mastodon, is also planned. 

In one thread on Threads (ha), in fact, users rushed to defend the app against the narrative that the app was dead, remarking that people should be more patient and wait for the needed features, and reminding others that even Instagram wasn't an overnight success.

Another post, led by social media consultant Matt Navarra, asked “threads is…” To this, Instagram head Adam Mosseri replied “a work in progress.” Across hundreds of other replies, many posted positive messages, calling the app an “opportunity,” better than Twitter, an “inspiration,” “exciting” and more — an indication that Threads is already building a community of fans.

Also Read:- Threads to Implement Limits to Drop down Spam amid Aholic Users

Another indication is the app's U.S. App Store rating, a 3.8-star rating across 20,000 reviews. Diving into where it's losing points, it seems many of those downrating the app are doing so due to its incomplete nature, calling it a “promising start” but removing stars for its lack of certain features. By comparison, Instagram has a 4.7-star rating and Facebook has a 2.3. Another thing Threads has in its favor, based on these reviews and other online conversations, is that the app, for now, feels “less toxic” than Twitter, several users have remarked. Twitter users are already dancing on Threads' grave thanks to the WSJ report, but it's really too early to conclude that Threads is dead after reporting a drop in Threads usage in the second week. An app that has broken records since its inception and continues to grow its user base will have a long way to go to deliver the functionality it wants to get back on its feet. 

Even Mastodon, Twitter's decentralized social networking competitor, seven years old, continues to grow following Elon Musk's Twitter failure. After acquiring Twitter, Mastodon reached his 2.5 million monthly active users. When Threads launched, Mastodon's monthly user count had dwindled to his 1.7 million. Since then, the company has grown again and now has 2.1 million monthly active users. These have their ups and downs. There is also an online culture willing to experiment with new apps, such as Twitter alternatives like Threads and Bluesky, Reddit alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin, or new ways to connect like TikTok instead of old-fashioned Facebook.

And Twitter doesn't have to fail completely for Threads to thrive. Users can choose one or the other, or use both. It's not necessarily a zero-sum game. That said, Meta has phased out nearly everything it's built over the years (rather than just buying it), so it doesn't have a great track record of successfully launching new apps. Threads may one day be just another app added to the graveyard.

Also Read:- Meta Threads to come down facing Steep Climb over the Users

But in the meantime, the app, with an estimated 116 million users and a growing trend, isn't "dead." 

Threads the new Instagram Feature had a great and huge impact on its rival Twitter as it was just launched by Meta. But now the app is failing as the user base is totally going underwater and till now it is reported to go down by 70%.