As archenemies, Elon Musk is showing signs of losing steam in front of Mark Zuckerberg

BI newspaper commented that Threads – Meta’s newly launched application is still winning the hearts of users and may be on its way to becoming bigger than X (formerly Twitter).

Specifically, according to usage estimates from Apptopia, Meta’s latest app, which launched last summer, has seen its daily active users steadily increase since November. Notably, Threads is now a direct competitor to X, a social network that has struggled to maintain its user base since Elon Musk acquired the platform about 18 months ago.

Since December of last year, Threads has had more daily active users (DAUs) in the US than X, and Threads has even become Apple’s most downloaded app.

“Thread’s DAUs in the US surpassed X in December 2023 and show no signs of slowing down,” said Thomas Grant, vice president of research at Apptopia. It is now the third most downloaded free app on the Apple App Store, with X at No. 41. In the Google Play Store, Threads is No. 12 among free apps, with X at No. 44.

So far in April, Threads has averaged about 28 million daily active users, meaning people who opened the app at least once in a 24-hour period. That’s a DAU increase of about 55% compared to December, when Threads averaged about 18 million daily users.

Meanwhile, X has averaged 22 million DAUs so far in April, a usage rate 21% lower than Threads. DAUs on X have been relatively stable over the past three months but have increased since December, when the platform hit 17 million DAUs. It was the first month Threads beat X on DAUs in the US.

X’s overall user base is still down from where it was before Musk took over the platform. According to Sensor Tower estimates, X’s daily active users worldwide fell 19% from October 2022, the month Musk took over Twitter. X’s global DAUs in the first quarter of 2024 were down 14% year-over-year.

However, Threads still has a long way to go to beat X as the most popular blogging app. Not to mention, reaching the ambitious goal of reaching 1 billion users of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also very difficult.

Last week, when Taylor Swift first used Threads to promote her latest album and received some features specifically for that, Threads reported “no noticeable increase” in users. Apptopia’s daily user estimates for the week also showed no increase in Threads users.

X’s monthly active users in the US also easily beat Threads. According to Apptopia’s estimates, Threads’ MAUs in the US have reached around 100 million over the past three months, although Zuckerberg said in February that total MAUs were closer to 130 million. Either way, X’s MAUs are just over 140 million in the US alone, although users have fluctuated between 135 million MAUs and the current 140 million over the past year.

Zuckerberg, however, seems bullish on Threads, and has praised the app in every quarterly earnings call since its launch. In February, Mark said Threads was “on track to be a huge success.”

“I’m optimistic that we can maintain our pace of innovation and growth and show that an app that’s geared toward friendly discussion can be as widely used as the most popular social apps,” Zuckerberg added.