This piece is cross-posted from my Medium account. Check it out for more posts like these.

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Threads took off to buoyant fanfare in July 2023, breaching the 10 million downloads threshold within a record seven hours of its launch. But the hype evaporated quickly. Six weeks after its launch, users were spending a paltry average of 2.4 minutes on the app daily, and the daily active user count was down 80%. IThe situation was exacerbated by a clumsy launch lacking basic functionalities like a desktop version, a hashtag / search function, and a discover page.

Many perceived this as a huge waste of opportunity – and they were right to think that it was. Given X’s… shenanigans, Threads had a golden opportunity to attract swathes of disgruntled users over to its platform from the get-go, while bolstering the strength of the overall Meta family of apps. But a rushed launch process meant that this was not possible.

However, in the past 6 months, Threads has managed to get its act together. Features like a web version, voice posts, search, edit functions, and more are now available. Other features like polls are also underway.

And the results show. An independent analyst, Quiver, estimates Threads’ current user count as 160 million. Another independent party, Apptopia, reports that Threads has managed an average of 33 million daily active users and 120 million monthly active users in October.

Of course, that’s still a far cry from the size of X’s userbase. Musk claimed that X had 550 million monthly active users in September, and CEO Linda Yaccarino put the figure of daily active users at 245 million in October.

Still, Threads’ downloads trend is promising. The chart below by Apptopia clearly shows how Threads’ downloads are trouncing X’s.

X’s woes – and Threads’ delight?

As X’s advertisers continue to run for the exits, and X continues to spiral into chaos, shouldn’t Threads be poised to reap all the benefits? After all, Threads has properly addressed its functionality issues, and can now be considered a decently stable social media platform. Contrasted against X’s chaos, shouldn’t that mean that we can expect X to drop dead anytime now?

The answer is no. And the reason is that X still provides a necessary function in the social media landscape that no other player, including Threads, can provide right now.

To quote Elon Musk, it’s to be a “digital town square.” And regardless of your opinions regarding how Musk’s management is managing to achieve this function, it’s still a function that no other social media app can replicate yet.

That’s because of the unique culture of X’s user base.

Apart from catching up with friends, people also use X for getting updates from brands and follow celebrities, politicians, business leaders, and receive breaking coverage on news and events. For example, X was one of the first sources where people could find information of NYC’s Hudson River flight landing in 2009. Most recently, it’s where the most updated and comprehensive information surrounding the OpenAI debacle could be found from reporters like Kara Swisher.

A recent Oxford study backed these anecdotes up. It revealed that 25% of X users use it for the main reason that it is a “good place to get the very latest news”, higher by quite some distance to second place Youtube at 16%. 

X’s more news-friendly design has attracted many politicians, celebrities, and journalists to quickly break news and engage with the public. Simultaneously, this has attracted news-engaged audiences interested to learn about events developing in real-time, especially from the people directly involved with them.

This unique userbase culture is extremely difficult to replicate. Crucially, other social media platforms aren’t trying to. In many ways, they’re trying to stay as far away from news as possible.

Take Meta for example. After widespread backlash Meta faced over its role in the 2016 Russia/US presidential election controversy, Meta has wanted nothing to do with news. Reports that Russia-backed Facebook posts ‘reached 126m Americans’ during the US election led Meta to significantly rework its algorithm, suppressing news content and instead favouring wholesome content from family and friends. More recent controversies over the 2020 presidential elections have no doubt left Meta executives even more loath to encourage the release and discussion of news on their platforms.

Take it from Instagram Head Adam Mosseri, who had this to say about Threads:

“The goal isn’t to replace Twitter. The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter. Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads – they have on Instagram as well to some extent – but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.”

..And another, more explicit quote from Mosseri:
“Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.”

Not so Fast

Given Meta’s controversy-riddled history, its lukewarm treatment of news seems justified—and makes sense from a business perspective. But it does mean that for now, at least, X can remain the de facto “town square” of social media.

And it shows. In a survey early last year, only 25% of X users reported that it would be unlikely that they will be on the site a year later. Meanwhile, 75% reported that they were somewhat or extremely likely to use X in a year’s time. A more recent survey in late 2023 similarly found that 63% of social media users would use X the same, or more, in 2024 as compared to 2023. Meanwhile, only 17% reported that they would likely stop using X entirely.

Above all, this indicates that despite social media’s tangled relationship with news and politics, a strong thirst for a truly conducive space to discuss these matters still exists. 

As long as Meta keeps its cautious stance towards hard news, Threads will never be able to truly encapsulate the essence of X, and by extension cannot directly compete for its user base. And that may be a good business decision overall. But with no other platform willing to promote hard news, X — in spite of its controversial and at times, bizarre, management — will keep going strong.