What you need to know
- Threads by Instagram is reportedly not retaining users as well as the company would hope.
- Mark Zuckerberg is allegedly not satisfied with people not sticking with the platform.
- The company's internal town hall meeting revealed Meta's plans to retain the subscriber base.
Threads by Instagram saw a successful launch early this month as the latest rival to Twitter X with perhaps the most potential, such that the text-based conversation app has surpassed 100 million sign-ups in just five days of its launch. However, despite the initial numbers, half of them reportedly left the platform after weeks of its launch, Reuters reports.
Mark Zuckerberg allegedly discussed user retention on the Threads app in a recent internal town hall meeting, according to Reuters, citing audio of the claimed discussion as proof. Zuckerberg noted that while retention was beyond the expectations of the social media company's executives, it could be better.
"Obviously, 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," Zuckerberg added.
The CEO of Meta Platforms further mentioned that the user's drop-off is usual, and the retention is likely to grow given the new features added to the app and upcoming features like the desktop version, next to search functionality. Meta recently brought the first significant update to the iOS version of the Threads app (and more recently to the Android app). The app introduced a new "Following" functionality — a highly-requested feature that allows users to see a chronological view of the Threat accounts they follow.
Meta is seemingly trying to bring the lost users back to the app by adding "retention-driving hooks," which translates to "making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads," per chief product officer Chris Cox in the same meeting. For those unaware, Instagram already allows Threads to show up as Stories if users from Threads want to share any thread on the social media platform.
Of course, Threads will have to continue adding new features if it wants to compete with the likes of Twitter X, but so far, it seems to be on the right track.
