In just one week, Threads' worldwide daily active users number drops over 50%

Instagram's Twitter challenger Threads got off to a great start earlier this month by signing up over 100 million subscribers in its first five days. According to SimilarWeb (via BGR), by July 7th, Threads had 49 million daily active users on Android worldwide which was 45% of the 109 million daily active users that used the Android version of Twitter on that same day. 

But by last Friday, July 14th, Threads' worldwide active daily users number on Android had tumbled to 23.6 million or less than half the total it had exactly one week before. It also worked out to just 22% of Twitter's daily active users on Android that same day. Usage of the app peaked in the U.S. where on July 7th the average amount of time spent on Threads hit 21 minutes per user. A week later, the average time each user in the States engaged with the platform had slipped to just over 6 minutes.

Even with many Twitter users trying Threads after it first launched, on the days when Threads had peak interest, the average daily users number for Twitter's Android app was unchanged. Time used on the app was down 4.3% on those days but was still over 25 minutes. This means that even on Threads' good days, while fewer people on Android used Twitter, those that did still spent a lot of time on the app.

Other data of note as released by SimilarWeb: Twitter saw its web traffic decline by 5% during the first two days that Threads was live. Even though traffic has bounced back, year-over-year web traffic for Twitter is down 11%. And Twitter's user retention numbers are not looking good, at least on Android where the percentage of new Twitter users who continuously use the app after 30 days has dropped from 19% in 2022 to 16% this past March. That compares to a 40% user retention rate for new Instagram users. 

And since Instagram users are the ones signing up for Threads, that bodes well for the future user retention rate for the upstart challenger Threads. Remember, To subscribe to Threads, you must have an Instagram account. And if you delete your Threads account, you must delete the connected Instagram account. That sounds like Threads users have a good incentive to stay subscribed to the platform.

SimilarWeb does note that, for at least right now, Threads is missing a few of the most basic features and has yet to offer users a compelling reason for social media users to drop Twitter and switch to Threads, or scratch their social media itch using Threads alone.