Mark Zuckerberg Says Threads ‘Growing Well’ With 150 Million Users

Threads now has more than 150 million monthly active users.

The Meta-owned text-based social media platform is “growing well,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday (April 24), during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

“There are now more than 150 million monthly actives, and it continues to generally be on the trajectory I hoped to see,” Zuckerberg said.

“My daughters would want me to mention that Taylor Swift is now on Threads — that was a big deal in my house,” he added.

Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said later in the call that Threads “continues to see good traction as we continue to ship valuable features and scale the community.”

Meta launched Threads in more than 100 countries on July 5, 2023, saying it would take what Meta’s Instagram does best and apply that to text.

Threads was not initially launched in the European Union (EU) due to uncertainty surrounding the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and data privacy.

In the first seven hours after its debut, Threads gained 10 million signups.

Zuckerberg said at the time that he was envisioning a much higher number, aiming to surpass Twitter’s 300 million-plus users.

“There should be a public conversation app with 1 billion-plus people on it,” he said. “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

Two days after the launch of the app, Zuckerberg reported that it had gained 70 million signups, adding that the figure was, “Way beyond our expectations.”

Threads then passed the 100-million user mark five days after launching. It was reported at the time that this rate of growth surpassed the record previously held by OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the fast-growing app.

However, by the end of its first month, Threads had lost over half its users. It was reported at the time that Zuckerberg said the drop-off was “normal” and that retention rates would grow as the company added more features to the app.

In a recent development, Apple said Friday (April 19) that it removed Threads, along with WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, from its App Store in China. The company said it was ordered to do so by the Cyberspace Administration of China, which cited national security concerns.