Mark Zuckerberg was giddy as the new social media app he created to compete with Elon Musk’s Twitter, now “X,” built up a user base of 100 million just five days after its launch. That is a more successful launch than ChatGPT, but whoa, has the momentum ever died.
Users are bailing on the app, Threads, in almost equally staggering numbers — and Zuck knows it. “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,” he told Reuters.
Zuckerberg is calling the free fall in user numbers “normal,” and he believes things will get better as more features are added. But, the number of users has been cut in half, and realistically it will be hard to get them back.
Patrick Bet-David invites you to the 2023 Vault Conference. Secure your tickets today!
One of their most significant issues is that the app needs features like hashtags, trending topics, and even the ability to view likes. So, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Meta’s Chief Product Officer Adam Mosseri said his team is working on “retention-driving hooks” to get people back. They are even finding ways to ensure Instagram users can see essential Threads trending on IG’s cousin site.
Did Zuckerberg and Meta rush the launch to take advantage of a dip in popularity for Twitter? It’s a fair question, especially considering how gung-ho Zuckerberg was a year ago, changing the name of his company from Facebook to Meta and announcing he was all in on the metaverse — which turned out to be a mistake.
Add comment