this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Threads Has Lost More Than 80% of Its Daily Active Users::Two separate data analysis firms say the Twitter killer from Instagram has unraveled even as Meta has rushed to add highly requested features.

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[–] emptyother 104 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Anyone think Fediverse active userbase is going to fall as much too, only slower? That most people will return to their comfy commercial social networks now that the reddit and twitter demonstrations is in the past?

I'm hoping not. I like it this active. I don't want to go back to ads and "personalised" feeds and yearly new useless features.

[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago

I don't think so. If you look at Mastodon it could actually keep most of its users and still seems to be growing.

Of course I don't know what the future holds for us.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think the no third party apps on Reddit is the best thing ever for fediverse - even if I wanted to return, I can't :)

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also, there's only so much- "he shot himself three times in the back of the head and fell out of a window" and "I also choose this guy's dead wife" and "if you owe the bank $1000 it's your problem and if you owe the bank $1m it's their problem" and "banana for scale" and "take my poor man's gold" ...ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

I've tried going back. I loved Reddit. But it's a recycling dump at this stage.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also "fuck around and find out" and its variations

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Adding on “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t know, I’m going to miss “banana for scale”. That one never got old (for me).

If Lemmy communities have such traditions, I’m looking forward to finding out

[–] emptyother 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, dont hold your shit in for 3 days..

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep without third party apps reddit is worthless to me. A lot of my time spent there was on mobile or a tablet using RIF.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

I feel like if you go through the effort of learning about and registering in the fediverse you have a higher chance of staying just because of the invested time.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

I came here due to the reddit drama and I'm definitely staying. Just like you, I like it here. The hardest part was actually making the switch, creating an account and finding communities to join. Now that that's out of the way, I really have no reason to go back. Reddit has become a hostile place, admins are actively fighting users and especially mods and I just don't feel comfortable there anymore.

It's like going to a restaurant where the owner is hitting the waiters and some of the guests. Doesn't matter how good the food is, doesn't matter if they're hitting me or not, I'm never going back to that place.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know I'm definitely not going back to Reddit. Ever since I found and joined Lemmy, I've been happier than I was on Reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I think Lemmy specifically doesn't fall victim to the issue of certain news agencies and personalities being exclusive to the platform as much as Mastodon does with Twitter. You can get the same news here as long as someone is there to post it, but that's where Lemmy is a bit behind at the moment: we haven't hit that critical mass of users such that smaller communities have enough content to sustain themselves. Maybe the platform isn't ready for all those people quite yet either; I think the software has a little maturing to do before mass adoption would happen.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Anyone think Fediverse active userbase is going to fall as much too, only slower?

I don't think so, people who joined already are here for philosophical reasons that are stronger than FOMO or slight technical discomfort, and the platform is already good enough to keep us entertained.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I’m currently not interested in going back to Reddit but “quantity has a quality of its own”. Yeah there were bad spots on Reddit, but so many well developed communities, and most niches found enough people for regular activity. I have yet to find anything like r/askHistorians anywhere. r/CastIron was active an interesting , vs practically dead here, etc

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I think thread's number of users was because of how much instagram has made it's name in the social media market. A lot of the users were there because it was new so the larger userbase was already weak. On the fediverse however, you (at least right now) have to put in a little bit of effort to learn about federation, clients, services etc. It's there as an alternative to the bigger players rather than a polished packaged shitbox by them.

As @[email protected] said, they will be there because of the invested time. I personally like it because it gives me close, tightly knit little communities on the web.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

According to numbers shown on https://fedidb.org it basically already has. Monthly Active Users is only about 17% of total users.

This kind of retention rate is not uncommon in free social services.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would say they didn't really lose 80%, because they barely had them to start with. If you click a link on Instagram and bam you're now a Threads user all 'signed up' ready to go? I mean yeah the barrier couldn't be lower there.

Retaining 20% of those users is in fact impressive. That's many millions of people.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

9 mil according to the post.

Pales in comparison to twitters DAU from prepurchase 2022. Who knows what their DAU is now.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What is threads, never heard of it

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Facebook's copy of Twitter

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Facebook’s copy of ~~Twitter~~ X

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

~~Facebook’s~~ Meta's copy of ~~Twitter~~ X

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Asshole's copy of dickhead

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform, shared its data with Gizmodo showing Threads daily active users hovered around 49 million just two days after launch.

David Carr, a senior insights manager at the analysis company, told us the engagement time based on just U.S. user data was slightly more favorable to Threads, but not by much.

Back during its 15 minutes of fame, Threads was leveraged as the fastest-growing platform in the history of apps, hitting 100 million user signups less than a week after launch.

Instagram head Amad Mosseri has also mentioned their intent to connect Threads to the decentralized Fediverse, though whether that drives new-found interest in the app is anyone’s guess.

It was clear from Thread’s launch that users were desperate for a Twitter alternative away from owner Elon Musk’s unending march toward making the platform a pay-to-play hellscape.

A big problem with the app was that it simply didn’t include features found in its main competitors, and the company spent years playing catch up, but all in vain.


I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

From the get go I thought Threads growth wasn't organic. The low usage stats, imho, only supports that thought. The app isn't bad and if people were really so desperate, they'd stick to it to help it's growth.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Threads is an add-on to instagram. It automatically created shadow accounts for everyone on instagram and automatically imported all followers. Under no reasonable definition can that be counted as organic.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

It didn’t automatically create accounts, you had to go in instagram and choose to sign up to threads. It’s just that it became very trendy very quickly and for a very short amount of time. Partly due to the fact that on signing up you got a badge on your instagram account saying you were the Xth person to sign up to threads.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Guys, its my turn to post this tomorrow!

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

It'll be 90% by then.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In general, noticeable drop after the initial hype is expected and usual. I'm sure, there are a lot of dead accounts on lemmy as well.

In case of threads the initial jump was super huge (because of several reasons), so is the drop. 20% is still a lot, and people already have an account there, some of them can return later.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I’d like to see similar data for Lemmy usage, before and after the Reddit fiasco. How big was the bump from Reddit? How quickly did it peak after the initial excitement? How many stayed?

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Years before the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, I left Facebook and vowed to never join any platform Zucks touches. Dude just gave me the creeps. One of the best times I ever listened to my vibes.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They rushed to release it early and take advantage of the high profile fuck ups at Twitter, it didn't even come out with a following feed. If even a quarter of users return I'll be surprised.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it didn't even come out with a following feed

Wait, what? You don't have a feed of accounts you follow?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The following feed is there now but kind of half baked. It only shows as an option when you click the home icon in the bottom left or the Threads icon located top middle. Then you can switch over to it.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Any downfall of Meta (former Facebook ) is a victory for FOSS community, internet and mankind as a whole. One of the heads of the Hydra Big Tech.

[–] msage 9 points 1 year ago

Unless Google goes down, free internet doesn't have a great outlook.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

I mean, wasn't it obvious this will happen? Most people that joined Threads did it because an Instagram popup told them to. Most of them weren't even Twitter users in the first place. So why would Threads even stick to a user base that wasn't even into microblogging in the first place?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Forget the privacy concerns. The issue with Threads is that it's very unfinished. They assumed the rate limiting was going to be the dumbest thing Elon was going to do, and they rushed it out the door long before it was ready.

It might still succeed, but you only get one chance at a first impression.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Forgot it even existed after the first 48 hours once I stopped seeing posts about it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Threads has lost more than 80% of its daily active users...so far

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

If Instagram didn't add the link, Threads likely would not have that many people.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Social ethics is not something the average people care about. I doubt if Twitter would be in trouble if not for the platform being absolutely terrible, and the non stop short slighted changes that just break things.

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