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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.
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 |
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 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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