Threads, Meta’s social network, has more app users than X, three years after its launch, according to data from Similarweb. As of January 7, Threads had 141.5 million daily active users worldwide on Android and iOS.
That’s more than the 125 million users of Elon Musk’s mobile platform.
According to Similarweb, Threads overtook X between late October and early November, after a period of steady growth. Similarweb notes that X today has half as many daily active mobile users in the US as it did a year ago.
The evolution, therefore, appears to be the result of a long-term trend, and not a sudden reaction to recent controversies surrounding X. This month, it became known that users were using the integrated AI Grok to generate nude images of women without consent, sometimes even of minors. Concerns about these deepfake images led to legal investigations into Grok worldwide.
Promotion and updates
The success of the Threads app can be explained by Meta’s active promotion of the app through its larger social networks, Instagram and Facebook. The app also rapidly acquired new features. Over the past year, Threads gained communities based on interests, improved filters, private messages, longer text messages, and disappearing messages. There have also been recent signs that Meta is experimenting with games.
In terms of web traffic — visits outside of mobile apps — X continues to clearly dominate. On January 13, the platform registered 145.4 million daily web visitors, compared to 8.5 million for Threads. While Meta may have won the mobile battle according to these estimates, with a total of around 150 million daily users across mobile and web combined, the company faces a significant challenge. With more than 270 million daily users, X will remain considerably larger for the time being.
