Twitter's alarming future as Threads hits 100 million users in 5 days

Meta Introduces Threads as a Platform to Compete with Twitter

Threads has grown rapidly since its launch on July 5, with Zuckerberg trying to attract users with the promise that the platform would focus on “goodness,” CNN reported.

With 100 million users in less than 5 days of launch, Threads has scored a more impressive goal than the 2-month period of the ChatGPT "fever" earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Twitter boss Elon Musk responded by threatening to sue Meta, Threads' parent company, for allegedly stealing trade secrets and plagiarizing its products.

Notably, traffic to Twitter has been declining for months, according to data from internet infrastructure company Cloudflare and web analytics company Similarweb. But the pace of decline has accelerated in recent days, reflecting strong interest in Threads as well as a mass exodus from the Elon Musk-owned platform to the Mark Zuckerberg-run one.

Twitter did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment on the matter.

Over the weekend, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince shared a chart showing Twitter’s popularity compared to other sites the company tracks. “Twitter traffic has dropped dramatically,” Prince noted.

The chart shows that in January, Twitter ranked 32nd on the list. The following month, it dropped to 34th. For much of the first half of the year, Twitter fluctuated between 35th and 37th place. But in early July, its popularity continued to decline rapidly, with Twitter falling to 40th place.

Sameweb told CNN they've also seen similar trends in Twitter traffic.

“During the first two days that Threads was available (July 6-7), web traffic to twitter.com dropped 5% compared to the same day last week and dropped 11% compared to July 6-7, 2022,” said David Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb.

Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, said on July 8 that he conducted an “unscientific test” of how an identical post he shared on Twitter, Threads and Mastodon performed over a 23-hour period.

He said that identical content he created on each platform saw significantly more engagement on Threads than on Twitter (as measured by likes and replies), even though his user reach on the newer platform was a fraction of what it was. He also noted that the quality of replies to his posts was much higher on non-Twitter platforms.

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief security officer, has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter but only one-tenth that number on Threads. “In my view, Twitter is built as a platform for serious conversations about technology,” Stamos said.

Competitor but not a complete substitute

Driving Threads' rapid growth is Meta's use of Instagram as a springboard to attract new users, along with Twitter's recent policy changes.

Threads started with a handful of celebrity accounts that were already on the platform, but has since attracted high-profile users like Kim Kardashian and Jeff Bezos. A banned Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk's private jet activity has also joined the new platform.

Over 100 US lawmakers have also signed up, although there are currently very few world leaders on Threads.

Mr. Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri have emphasized that Threads is not just a Twitter replacement, but that the app is looking to appeal to users outside Twitter’s traditional user base. That means Threads won’t actively promote news or political content.

Over the weekend, Mosseri’s stance on news and politics sparked a debate about Threads’ approach to those topics. Some users praised it as making the platform more accessible to average users — people who may have never used Twitter before. Others argued that many of the topics Mosseri described as apolitical, including music, fashion, and entertainment, are their own news sources and can be inherently political.

Even as Meta executives seek to create a differentiating factor between Threads and Twitter, Threads' rapid rise appears to have only deepened the apparent rivalry between tech billionaires Musk and Zuckerberg.

According to Tin Tuc Newspaper