Alex Heath, the Verge:
By all measures, Meta’s Threads app had a very good year. The app was Apple’s second-most-downloaded iOS app of the year, trailing only ChatGPT. Threads now has 400 million monthly and 150 million daily active users.
It is interesting to see how much this varies by region. In Canada, Threads was third, behind ChatGPT and Temu, as it was in Taiwan where Threads made something of an impact last year. In Mexico...
Alex Heath, the Verge:
By all measures, Meta’s Threads app had a very good year. The app was Apple’s second-most-downloaded iOS app of the year, trailing only ChatGPT. Threads now has 400 million monthly and 150 million daily active users.
It is interesting to see how much this varies by region. In Canada, Threads was third, behind ChatGPT and Temu, as it was in Taiwan where Threads made something of an impact last year. In Mexico, it was twelfth. Top app charts for 2025 are not available for every country, but even this limited range is kind of curious. ChatGPT is huge everywhere, and you can feel it; TikTok continues to be a cultural force.
Yet, even though Threads is apparently incredibly popular, I still do not know anyone in real life who actually uses it. I have never once heard the phrase hey, did you see that post on Threads? from a friend. To be fair, it is not as though the charts are packed with the social apps I like: neither Bluesky nor any Mastodon client is on any of those regional charts. But a couple of years into Threads, my local news broadcasters and municipal authorities are not pushing me to follow their accounts there, either. Perhaps as this style of social media splinters into multiple competing networks, its draw on the public conscience may fade.
Heath:
That growth is still coming mainly from Meta’s other platforms. “We do a lot of work in Instagram and Facebook to show off what’s going on in Threads,” Connor Hayes, the head of Threads, told me this week. The playbook: surface personalized Threads content in your Instagram and Facebook feeds, get you to download the app, then wean you off needing those nudges to check it consistently. “We do a bunch of work to get people off of being dependent on those promotions and wake up in the morning and just want to open the app,” Hayes explained.
I think I know what Hayes means by this. I use the web version of Instagram because I cannot stand the app. Until earlier this year, there was a persistent red dot on my notifications icon and, when I clicked on it, told me that there was a notification on Threads. However, when I clicked the notification, I saw no such updates on Threads. I fell for this growth hacking trick a few times before I realized it was just a lie.
Heath:
Threads still supports federation with other apps like Mastodon, but Hayes was clear that it’s not a top priority for the current roadmap. “It’s something that we’re supporting, it’s something that we’re maintaining, but it’s not the thing that we’re talking about that’s gonna help the app break out,” he said.
Two years ago, Tom Coates attended a large meeting held by Meta to discuss Threads’ enthusiasm for the fediverse. With that in the rear-view mirror, it seems Meta has gotten all it needs from integrating with an open protocol.