The race between social media platforms heats up as Threads, Meta’s latest addition, surges ahead in the post-election frenzy. In just two weeks, Threads has gained a whopping 15 million new users, according to Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s boss. This surge follows a trend of daily sign-ups, with more than 1 million joining the platform each day.
What’s Happening & Why This Matters
In terms of raw numbers, Threads has seen some serious growth. AppFigures reports over 4.8 million downloads on iOS and 8.2 million on Android in just two weeks. Metrics bring the total user count closer to 13 million, excluding desktop web sign-ups. The United States, Brazil, and India lead the pack in downloads, showing a global appetite for new platforms.
But the drama doesn’t end there. While Threads is quickly gaining ground, Bluesky, its competitor, is struggling with some growing pains. After the election, Bluesky had a massive boost of 1 million new users in a single day, but just hours later the platform suffered a major outage. The issue was traced back to a fiber optic cable cut by one of its providers causing the temporary network disruption. This downtime lasted about 15 to 30 minutes, though it disrupted users for a few hours.
Despite the hiccup, Bluesky’s rapid user growth remains notable with nearly 1.7 million new Android users and over 1.6 million iOS sign-ups in just the past month. But compared to Threads’ impressive 19 million Android downloads and 11.1 million iOS downloads, Bluesky still trails behind in the race.
TF Summary: What’s Next
The battle for social media dominance is not over. Threads continues to gain traction with its smooth onboarding and promises of future monetization through ads. But Bluesky isn’t backing down, despite a few technical setbacks. With more users flocking to alternatives to X, it will be interesting to see how both platforms attract users particularly with rising competition and vesting monetization strategies. TF will see how the platforms handle user growth (and outages) as each attempt to solidify their positions against X.
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