Meta’s Threads app burst into the social media scene as a promising alternative to X, formerly known as Twitter, amidst Elon Musk’s controversial acquisition and transformation of the platform in 2022. However, its monumental rise and fall has left many questioning its potential in an already overcrowded market.

Tynesha McCullers, a provost fellow and doctoral student in communication, rhetoric and digital media, who studies social media usage and its impacts on African American communities, said Meta initially launched Threads as a reaction to dissatisfaction with Musk’s handling of X.

“The development of Threads as an app came as a reactive approach to both Twitter being sold to Elon Musk, and then the development of Mastodon and Bluesky … but Threads was [Meta’s] answer to trying to develop an app that did the same thing,” McCullers said.

Tyler Arnold, a second-year studying aerospace engineering and an X user, said he does not trust the app for news due to Musk’s changes.

“[Musk] made it like you can buy verification, [that] made it really irritating,” Arnold said. “Just scrolling through, you can see just like trolls and bots were verified.”

From the start, Meta prioritized ease in registration. Users could simply import their Instagram information and instantly connect with all of their previous followers. Consequently, Threads set a record as the fastest-growing social media app, reaching one million users in one hour and 100 million users four days after its release.

McCullers said users flocked to the platform because of its novelty and familiarity with Meta as a corporation.

“Not only is it this new, fresh thing, but it’s also from a company that we already have a relationship and some trust with, so people were eager to run to it at the same time [when]  there were other competitor apps coming out,” McCullers said. “Facebook is this well-known app. It has a couple of decades more than other apps do. And so people trusted it and wanted to, at the very least, try it out because Twitter was becoming a disaster space with all of the glitches and all of the changes of features and costs.”

Abigail Stuart, a second-year studying fashion and textile management, said she joined Threads because she saw it as having the same functionality as X but tailored to her Instagram community.

“I really liked it because it was like Twitter, but we could still follow the same people who were on Instagram, which I think is one of the reasons I didn’t like Twitter because the people I know aren’t on Twitter,” Stuart said. 

As of February, Threads has 160 million users but only 10.3 million are active daily users, which is down 79% since its peak. Its users spend an average of three minutes on the app per day, while X has 200 million daily users who spend an average of 31 minutes on the app each day.

Stuart said she stopped using Threads because it felt too separate from Instagram.

“A lot of my friends didn’t post on it the way that celebrities and bigger accounts did, and it kind of phased out; I feel like because it just felt different than Instagram,” Stuart said. “It didn’t feel integrated in the feed like stories, DMs and normal posts and reels did. And also just like that idea of having to download a separate app — I felt like it should just be like a new part of our feed instead of a different app.”

Arnold said he never downloaded Threads because he did not want to divide his time between any more social media platforms.

“I’m on Instagram and Reddit and X already, so I don’t think I need another account to scroll through and waste my time,” Arnold said.

McCullers said it takes time and years of investment to make a social media app a mainstay.

“It took Twitter 17 years to become the app that it is,” McCullers said. “It took a significant amount of time for it to build this reputation and this rapport with its users. And despite what Musk has done in this last year to kind of devalue it, people still find value in what Twitter has to offer and unfortunately, Threads has not proven itself or made itself a mainstay for folks to consider the app and be willing to follow along with it.”

Although Threads’ daily users have plummeted, McCullers said Threads may have a chance to rise again in the future after the next election season passes and X’s rapport continues to decline.

“I don’t think it’s completely done away with right now because we have some really big events that are happening right now that people are still relying on Twitter,” McCullers said. “Do I think that it could shift in the next couple of years? Absolutely. Especially if we continue at this rate where Musk is shifting the features or changing the costs. I say that to say Threads has potential, but I don’t know if it’ll be an immediate migration over.”