On September 25, 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a smartphone and delivered a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event held at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, USA.
Manuel Orbergozo | Reuters
Wire, YuanThe app, a competitor to Elon Musk’s X app, currently has nearly 275 million monthly users, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday.
“We continue to be on track to become our next major social app,” Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts, adding that he was “very pleased” with the app’s trajectory.
The latest data shows that the number of Threads users has increased by 175% from a year ago, when the number of users reached 100 million. The app’s number of monthly active users has also increased since Meta released its second-quarter report in July, to 200 million. Zuckerberg also said on Wednesday that the app currently has more than 1 million registered users per day.
Threads, launched in July 2023, is a competitor to Musk’s X, which acquired the social app, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in October 2022.
In terms of users, X is still ahead of Threads, but not by much. Musk’s social media app currently has about 318 million monthly users, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. That number has dropped 24% since Musk completed his acquisition of the company in October 2022, according to Sensor Tower.
Threads can provide Meta with more places to place ads to users. Advertising revenue accounted for 98.3% of Meta’s total revenue in the third quarter.
“Specifically, as it relates to monetization, we don’t expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of revenue in 2025 at this time,” Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said on the earnings call. “We feel comfortable with our growth trajectory and are once again really Focus on introducing features that the community finds valuable.”
Analysts at Bernstein wrote on Wednesday that Threads’ growth is exciting.
“While Meta does not expect Threads to be a significant driver of revenue in 2025, we expect advertising to appear and scale on Threads next year,” Bernstein analysts wrote.
Daily active users across Meta’s family of apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and other consumer-facing platforms, grew 5% year over year to 3.29 billion, the company said. The figure was lower than analysts’ expectations of 3.31 billion.
Meta shares closed down 4% on Thursday.
“We’re very focused on continuing to build the functionality of Threads over time and respond to what users tell us they’re interested in,” Lee said.
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