X rival Threads has almost 100 mn monthly users: Zuckerberg

SAN FRANCISCO: Instagram’s Threads has reached almost 100 million monthly users, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced. During the company’s quarterly earnings call late on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said: “We’re three months in now, and I’m very happy with the trajectory.”

“I’ve thought for a long time there should be a billion-person public conversations app that is a bit more positive,” he told the analysts. He further said that if we keep at this for a few more years, “then I think we have a good chance of achieving our vision there.”

Meta launched Threads in July as a Twitter competitor but it soon lost steam and began losing users owing to the lack of Twitter-like features.

“Threads also remains a compelling long-term opportunity, and we’re excited to build on the strong product momentum we have going into next year,” said Meta CFO Susan Li during the call.

Earlier this month, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that Threads is not going to amplify news on the platform. In a post on Threads, Mosseri said they are not anti-news and news is clearly already on Threads.

“People can share news; people can follow accounts that share news. We’re not going to get in the way of any either. But, we’re also not going to amplify news on the platform,” he noted. However, if Threads does not post news on its platform, it will never be an alternative to X.