Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has revealed that Threads, the company’s new social media platform and Twitter rival, has experienced a significant drop in users after its initial success. Within just five days of its launch, Threads amassed over 100 million users, but the numbers have since dwindled, losing more than half of its user base.
“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,” the tech CEO expressed.
Zuckerberg acknowledged the decline during a call with employees, describing the situation as “normal.” He expressed hope that retention would improve as new features were added to the app. Threads faced criticism for its limited functionality upon release, prompting Meta to introduce new features such as separate “following” and “for you” feeds, and enhanced translation capabilities for posts in different languages.
Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, emphasized their focus on adding “retention-driving hooks” to draw users back to the platform. For instance, they are working on ensuring that users on the Instagram app can see important Threads content, as the two platforms are closely linked, with users requiring an Instagram account to sign up for Threads.
Zuckerberg also updated employees on Meta’s ambitious venture into the Metaverse, a virtual reality world yet to be created. The company is developing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology to power the Metaverse, which Zuckerberg expects to go mainstream in the next decade. However, there have been concerns about Meta’s heavy investment in the Metaverse, as its Reality Labs division, responsible for VR headsets and products, has incurred substantial losses.
Despite these challenges, Meta remains financially successful, reporting a profit of $7.79 billion in the last quarter. Addressing another headline-making issue, Zuckerberg touched upon the proposed cage fight with tech titan Elon Musk, stating that he was unsure if it would come to fruition. The playful exchange between the two tech moguls some weeks had suggested they were interested in arranging a bout, though no concrete plans have been made yet.
