Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a smartphone as he delivers a keynote speech at Meta Connect’s annual event at the company’s headquarters on September 25, 2024 in Menlo Park, California, US.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
threads, MetaCEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday that rival Elon Musk’s X app now has about 275 million monthly users.
“We’re on track to be the next big social app,” Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts, adding that he was “pretty happy” with the app’s momentum.
The latest numbers show that Threads is up 175 percent from a year ago when it reached 100 million users. The app has topped 200 million monthly actives since Meta’s second-quarter report in July. Zuckerberg also said Wednesday that the app is now signing up more than 1 million users a day.
Threads launched in July 2023 as a competitor to Musk-owned X, which in October 2022 closed a deal to buy the social app known as Twitter for $44 billion.
X is ahead of Threads in terms of users, with research firm Sensor Tower estimating in March that the app had 550 million monthly users. However, X’s US user base has dropped 23% since Musk completed his purchase of the company in October 2023.
Threads can give Meta more places to serve ads to users. Advertising accounted for 98.3% of Meta’s total revenue in the third quarter.
“In particular, as it relates to monetization, we do not currently expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue,” CFO Susan Lee said on the earnings call. “We’re just thrilled with the pace of development and are, once again, really focused on introducing features that the community finds valuable.”
Threads’ growth provides plenty to be excited about, Bernstein analysts wrote on Wednesday.
“While Meta does not expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue, we expect ads to appear on Threads next year,” Bernstein analysts wrote.
Across Meta’s family of apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram and other consumer-facing platforms, the company said its daily actives grew 5 percent year over year to 3.29 billion. The figure was below analysts’ expectations of 3.31 billion.
Meta shares were down about 4 percent on Thursday.
“We’re focused on continuing to have Threads-like functionality over time and being responsive to what users tell us they’re interested in,” Lee said.
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