If you're still on X, you're becoming the minority (at least on mobile)

Part of X’s slowdown may be tied to users leaving the platform over time, driven by frustration with its direction, the owner’s political stances, and ongoing issues with its AI chatbot, Grok. Grok, in particular, has raised eyebrows more than once, including a recent controversy around image generation rules that allowed the creation of fake images of real people in sensitive situations.

That said, the story flips when you look at the web. Threads still struggles to gain traction outside mobile, while X continues to pull in a large desktop audience. X currently averages around 145.4 million daily web visits, compared to just 8.5 million across Threads.com and Threads.net combined. The gap there is massive, which shows the battle is far from settled.

Threads’ growth is accelerating while X focuses elsewhere

Threads’ growth hasn’t been sudden or random either. Its rise has been steady. A big reason could be Meta’s ecosystem advantage, with Threads heavily promoted across Facebook and Instagram, making it easy for users to jump in without much friction.

Meta has also been aggressive with feature rollouts. Over the past year, Threads has added improved content filters, direct messages, interest-based communities, disappearing content, and even started testing games. That constant stream of updates keeps the app feeling active and evolving.

On the other side, X has been putting most of its energy into Grok and AI-related tools. Elon Musk’s long-term vision of turning X into a full-on “everything app” – covering payments, content creation, and social features – still feels more like a work in progress than a reality.

More users, more features – but are either platform actually better?

Personally, neither app really does it for me. Both Threads and X seem to be leaning too hard into AI, often at the expense of what originally made social platforms enjoyable. In my view, the growing focus on AI is starting to overshadow basic things like meaningful interactions and clean feeds.

Still, competition between the two is healthy, especially if it pushes faster feature development. But I’d rather see improvements that actually enhance the user experience – better feed curation, fewer ads, and more posts from friends instead of endless creator content. Until then, the race between Threads and X may continue, but it’s not exactly winning me over.