Instagram Threads now has one-fifth the weekly active user base of Twitter

Instagram Threads’ launch has been an overnight success, topping 100 million users within days of its arrival. Now, new data indicates the app has already achieved one-fifth of the weekly active user base of Twitter worldwide and 86 times the weekly active user base of the largest Twitter rival in the U.S., Truth Social, which had a weekly active user base of 1 million as of last week.

The new insights, provided by app intelligence firm data.ai, follow another analysis of Threads’ early traction, which had demonstrated a slight dip in early usage. According to the app intelligence firm Sensor Tower late last week, Threads’ daily active users declined on Tuesday and Wednesday — down around 20% from Saturday. Time spent was also down by 50%, from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, the firm said, as reported by CNBC.

But momentum for Threads is far from over, data.ai points out. The app has now achieved over 150 million downloads, by its current estimates — which is 5.5 times faster than Niantic’s Pokémon Go, which had held the record for largest app launch title since its July 2016 debut.

The Twitter rival had attracted an audience of around 93 million active users globally during its first partial week of availability, ahead of the official announcement of its 100 million signups milestone on July 10.

The firm also found that India, not the U.S., is leading in terms of downloads of the new app, accounting for 33% of global downloads. It’s followed by Brazil (22%), then the U.S. (16%), and finally Mexico and Japan, at 8% and 5%, respectively. Threads, however, is not available in the EU at this time due to regulatory hurdles related to privacy concerns and data collection practices. Meta even recently began preventing EU users from working around the block on Threads by way of VPNs.

Threads recently released its first major update since its launch, bringing support for iOS 17, now available as a public beta, among other smaller changes. Still ahead for the app are larger improvements like a following feed, an edit button, multi-account support, and integration with ActivityPub, the protocol powering the popular, decentralized Twitter alternative Mastodon.

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