Twitter’s youngest competitor, Threads, has been making waves since it launched, and it seems to be gaining serious traction in emerging countries.
Between July 6th to the 11th more than 100 million users signed up to use the app during its release with over a quarter of new users located in India.
According to Sensor Tower in an analysis of global downloads of Threads, India had the lion’s share of downloads soaring to 27.1%, while the U.S. came in only at 13.6%.
Also securing a spot in the top five were Brazil, Mexico, and Japan at 13.3%, 4.8%, and 3.7% respectively. Added with Indonesia and Egypt, these countries combined all accounted for 55% of overall Threads downloads.
Is the primary reason most Thread subscribers are located in emerging countries due to Instagram being owned by Meta of which India, the U.S., and Brazil are top subscribers? Instagram has a huge following of 2 billion users which also has helped in boosting Threads subscribing numbers.
Emerging economies also are a significant amount of Twitter’s audience but only makeup closer to 27% of the social platform’s total.
In contrast, Twitter’s user base is primarily found in developed nations.
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As of 2022 and according to DataReportal, the US. had a 17.6% share of the market and was the platform’s leading audience with Japan trailing close behind at 13.5%.
With daily site visits to Twitter down 5% as according to Similarweb, Linda Yaccarino, CEO of Twitter operator X Corp. responded with a tweet playing down Threads status.
“Last week we had our largest usage day since February,” she said, adding, “There’s only ONE Twitter.”
Threads is not the first competitor that has taken on Twitter, but Threads seemed to have captured the attention of high-profile celebrities right away with Oprah, Gordon Ramsay, the Dalai Lama and Kim Kardashian becoming subscribers.
(FILE PHOTO: Meta’s Threads app and Twitter logos are seen in this illustration taken July 4, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)
Twitter also has a long list of celebrities and high-profile folks online, but one difference is Threads has had dozens of times more cumulative downloads than any other Twitter competitor.
To intrigue new users for the app, Meta tried to differentiate itself from Twitter by characterising Threads as a “new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations”.
The challenge is gaining an even more influential following to keep user’s interest.
“If it gains more highly influential users, it’ll be easier for it to attract people,” said a professor of communications studies at Tokyo Keizai University, Satoshi Kitamura.
For some, connections between Threads and Meta have the potential to put off subscribers who may only want to use the platform and ignore the controversial nature of the app’s leadership, not unlike Twitter.
“There’s no guarantee that Threads will remain the undisputed winner… Users will probably keep looking for different social media platforms for a while,” Kitamura, a social media expert, said.
