Meta’s Threads app turned the fastest-growing shopper utility in historical past when it hit the 100 million consumer mark within the blink of a watch. Even a diehard Meta-cynic like myself couldn’t assist however be impressed with the rollout. And whereas I used to be much less impressed with the product — I ended utilizing it after a couple of days — I believed it was solely a matter of time earlier than Threads surpassed the consumer numbers of Twitter (now, in fact, known as X). I even wrote as a lot:

It’s solely a matter of time earlier than Threads is larger than Twitter. It may even occur within the subsequent couple of weeks. Nevertheless it’s additionally clear this app received’t kill Twitter, not in its present copy-and-paste format.

Practically a month on, I sit at a 50% strike price for these predictions. Threads hasn’t leapfrogged X, however nor has it killed its rival. Whereas Elon Musk appears to be doing his greatest to attempt (we solely want to have a look at the spontaneous rebrand and destruction of 15 years of brand name fairness), it’s nonetheless alive and kicking. In actuality, Thread’s development is already stagnating, with the estimated consumer depend presently at 122 million. Keep in mind 100 million turned up within the first week. It seems most customers who had been keen to change over have finished so, and now the stream is beginning to trickle. That’s regardless of Instagram’s consumer base being over 1.4 billion; it solely wanted to transform ~20% of these customers to attain that focus on.

With Zuckerberg’s purpose set on the seemingly inconceivable variety of 1 billion customers, this apparent tailing off spells unhealthy information. The success of Threads trusted whether or not it may construct on the preliminary hype. Each app that launches enjoys a honeymoon interval however then comes the drop-off, and the exhausting work begins to win them again and develop. For Meta, it wanted to clear X’s numbers earlier than the slide began to offer it any hope of really changing the platform as the primary text-led social platform. Beating out Twitter would have given it leverage, authority, and bragging rights — most significantly, it might have sustained the momentum.

It hasn’t come shut.

Worse, time spent on the platform is shrinking quick. That shouldn’t come as a shock — the content material on Threads is way worse than X. It’d need to place itself as a “happier” place, with extra…