Four months in, here’s how major news publishers are doing on Threads

In July, Threads made history by becoming one of the fastest-growing products in tech. Meta’s text-based platform, widely seen as a competitor to X / Twitter, was well-positioned for growth thanks to its parent company’s extensive expertise with social networks like Facebook and Instagram and because of X’s decline.

 Threads saw massive early adoption, surpassing 1 million registered users within the first hour of launch. That momentum continued as it reached 70 million users after two days and 100 million users within four days.

Usage growth quickly plateaued according to SimilarWeb data. By one month post-launch, app sessions were down 79% compared to launch week highs. Declines in new registrations and monthly active usage raised speculation about Threads’ longevity, and the platform stopped making headlines.

Yet, there are reasons to believe that Threads is a promising platform in the longer term. In October Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the app had maintained “just under” 100 million monthly users since its July debut. X’s decline under Elon Musk’s leadership continues manifesting in declining usage and advertisers fleeing following the owner’s antisemitic comments.

Threads is still not officially available in the European Union because of Meta’s worries about upcoming tech regulations. When this changes, the platform’s popularity in Europe might grow, with more news publishers building a presence on Threads.

In the meanwhile, we looked at what top news publishers are present on Threads, how many followers they have and how active they are.

English-language publishers

The data was updated on November 21, 2023

Outlet	Followers on Threads	Followers on X	Frequency of posting
The New York Times	2.3 million	55.1 million	Multiple times a day
CNN	2.2 million	61.9 million	Multiple times a day
The Washington Post	1.1 million	20 million	Multiple times a day
The Wall Street Journal	721,000	20.6 million	Multiple times a day
NBC News	532,000	9.4 million	Last post a few weeks ago
Politico	495,000	4.6 million	Multiple times a day
Fox News	432,000	24.2 million	No posts
The Atlantic	426,000	2 million	Multiple times a day
The Guardian	791,000	10.9 million	Multiple times a day
BBC	720,000	2.2 million	No posts since first weeks of launch
Forbes	823,000	19.6 million	Multiple times a day
Bloomberg Business	706,000	9.3 million	Multiple times a day
The Economist	863,000	27.1 million	Last post days ago
Time	1.1 million	19.3 million	Last post days ago
Vice	580,000	1.9 million	Multiple times a day
The New Yorker	949,000	8.8 million	Multiple times a day

European non-English outlets

Outlet	Followers on Threads	Followers on X	Frequency of posting
Deutsche Welle	94,500	178,300	Last post a few weeks ago
France24	80,200	5 million	No posts
Le Monde	72,000	10.7 million	No posts since first week of launch
Euronews	44,200	573,600	No posts since first week of launch
Der Spiegel	13,200	3.1 million	No posts

The upshot

The strategies employed by publishers on Threads have differed notably. Some outlets have clearly made concerted efforts to establish a presence and regularly engage their follower bases through posting. However, other once-active accounts have seemingly pulled back from the platform within days of registering, in some cases rather abruptly despite achieving sizable audiences.

The level of hope that publishers have for Threads at this stage remains unclear, although most major outlets have maintained a consistent presence on the platform with daily posts. At the same time, we have not observed publishers adopting notably different formatting strategies on Threads compared to X. But with Meta’s readiness to tweak algorithms, this may come to light with time.

Source of the cover photo: https://unsplash.com

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