Exclusive: Threads adds 35M new sign-ups this month
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Instagram's X rival, Threads, has seen 35 million new users sign up for the platform since Nov. 1, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Axios.
Why it matters: Threads and rival Bluesky are competing to attract disenchanted X users following the 2024 election.
- Bluesky said last week it now has more than 20 million users. The app's usage grew more than 5x in the two weeks following the election, per Similarweb.
By the numbers: On Nov. 14, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Threads added more than 15 million new sign-ups since the start of the month.
- According to the new data, another 20 million new sign-ups have been added in the past 11 days.
- The app is now going on three months of more than 1 million sign-ups per day, Stone said.
Between the lines: Bluesky is still tiny compared to Threads and X.
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company's third-quarter earnings call last month that Threads had over 275 million monthly active users.
- Because Elon Musk took X private, the app isn't required to disclose its user figures, but X executives have told advertisers that the app has over 570 million monthly active users globally.
Zoom out: Threads is pushing aggressively to capitalize on its newfound momentum.
- Zuckerberg on Monday said Threads is testing an option to let users decide what type of feed experience they wish to have when opening the app, a similar offering to X and Bluesky.
- Previously, Threads users were shown a default feed that displayed posts from accounts users followed combined with suggested posts. Now, Zuckerberg says users will have the option to choose a default feed when they open the app that just shows them posts from accounts they follow.
- A few days earlier, Mosseri said Meta is testing an enhanced search experience in which users can search for posts from a single account or within a specific date range.
- He also teased an improved "Trending" feature in the U.S. that includes AI-powered summaries of what people are discussing.
What to watch: Bluesky's growth has spurred inbound interest for a new investment round, just weeks after raising $15 million in Series A funding, per Axios' Dan Primack.
- Founded by former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2019, the app took several years to launch out of beta, only becoming available to the public earlier this year.
- Threads had more than 175 million active users when it turned 1 in July.
The bottom line: X is still the dominant social discourse app in America, garnering 30 times more daily visits in the U.S. on average during the general election than rival platforms, per Similarweb.
- But analysts believe its rivals will continue to benefit from users leaving X or investing time in exploring a promising alternative.
