As Twitter X Hits New High In Monthly Users, Zuck Admits Threads Failing In Leaked Audio

Twitter, now rebranded as X, reached a new record high in monthly users as per a new tweet via Elon Musk. On the other hand, Meta’s Threads, which is basically a Twitter clone, has lost more than half of its users who downloaded the new app earlier this month, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

Zuckerberg told employees, “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.” 

Reuters obtained a copy of the company’s internal town hall with employees. Zuckerberg considered the exodus of users a “normal” drop-off and expected retention would soon increase with the expansion of new features. 

Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said Meta is adding more “retention-driving hooks” to lure users back to the text-based social media platform to stop the hemorrhaging. 

Since the July 5 launch, data firm Sensor Tower has shown daily active users on the app have plunged to 13 million, a drop of around 70%. We’ve detailed the ‘unthreading’ of Threads in a series of notes:

Thread’s launch came days after Elon Musk announced a series of temporary limits on viewing tweets to avoid extreme manipulation and data scraping. 

To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:

– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

Meanwhile, data privacy and censorship concerns have emerged, with former Twitter owner Jack Dorsey highlighting the vast amount of data collected by Threads.

All your Threads are belong to us https://t.co/FfrIcUng5O pic.twitter.com/V7xbMOfINt

— jack (@jack) July 4, 2023

Yet this could be another venture Zuckerberg struggles at, just like Meta’s virtual reality unit has lost as much as $21.3 billion since the start of last year. 

Twitter was rebranded to “X” on Monday. 

X is finally arriving! 🔥

X will be an “everything app” i.e. super app for U.S. (like WeChat of China)

• Social: network, msgs, video, content
• Finance: banking, payments, data

“Overtime it would be HALF of global financial system” – Elon Muskpic.twitter.com/wWywAdYRZR

— Brandon Hoffman (@BrandonHoffman_) July 14, 2023

Musk has said it will be an “everything app.”  

𝕏 monthly users reach new high in 2023 pic.twitter.com/trqLGBEvvA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2023

Musk tweeted Friday that the platform has achieved a new milestone with 541.5 million monthly users.