(San Francisco) Threads, Meta’s new social app, is off to a flying start. With 100 million downloads in less than a week, Threads seemed poised to dethrone Twitter.
But the number of downloads is no guarantee of long-term success. Can Threads last?
To find out, we did an experiment. We found 15 of the most followed personalities on Twitter who joined Threads. Among them are Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Gates, Britney Spears, Shakira and Oprah Winfrey. Next, we compared their activity on Twitter with their activity on Threads every day since July 5, when Threads launched. We also looked at their activity on Instagram, which developed Threads (both owned by Meta).
The idea was to see on which platform these celebrities – they declined to comment or were unwilling to answer our questions – were the most active. The result is just a first look, but could be an indicator of what’s to come to Threads.
At first, many celebrities adopted Threads.
Ms. DeGeneres, on Twitter since 2008, hadn’t tweeted since late April. She was among the first 3,000 people to download Threads.
On July 5, she wrote on Threads, “Welcome to Gay Twitter! Soon, more than 7,000 responses followed.
Of our 15 celebrities, Ms. DeGeneres is one of three who had stopped posting on Twitter in the past few months and appeared on Threads. The other two are Selena Gomez (no tweets since the end of May) and Oprah Winfrey (nothing since January). Ms. Gomez used Threads to greet her fans, while Ms. Winfrey said she was on Threads to promote a musical remake of The Color Purple, which she produced.
Other celebrities, like Demi Lovato, have started favoring Threads over Twitter. During the first week of Threads, Lovato posted six posts on Threads and just one on Twitter promoting the rock version of her hit Sorry, Not Sorry.
On Threads, Ms. Lovato engaged with her fans, asking for music recommendations, even though she only has 2 million followers (as of August 26), a fraction of the 53 million people who follow her on Twitter. .
Wiz Khalifa was the most prolific on Threads, before cutting the pace. The rapper, real name Cameron Jibril Thomaz, posted original posts there and shared other people’s posts and replies. On average, he posted 38 posts per day on Threads in the first two weeks, compared to just five posts per day on Twitter.
Basically, his posts on Threads mixed text, photos and videos with information about his personal life. “Proud to bring the weed to Threads,” he wrote on July 5 at the bottom of a video in which he lights up a joint.
But his activity on Threads soon dwindled. In the first week, he replied to over 100 messages (mostly those who had replied to his messages). By the second week, her responses became rarer. He also reduced his original posts and shares.
From July 16, he resumed his activity on Twitter, sometimes writing more than 10 times a day. He’s still more active on Threads, but he’s started posting the same content on both platforms.
Of the 15 celebrities we followed who joined Threads, four — Perry, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner and Miley Cyrus — had nothing to do with it. And like Khalifa, others seem to have lost their initial enthusiasm for Threads. Shakira, after being active on Threads for the first week, did not touch it again after July 13. Ellen DeGeneres, who posted six posts on Threads in the first week, only did so once in the week leading up to July 26.
Their participation in the decline is not unusual. The average time spent on Threads by its users was 3.3 minutes per day on July 24, up from 19 minutes on July 6, according to data from Sensor Tower, a marketing analytics firm. In contrast, users spend an average of 60 minutes per day on Instagram and 29.3 minutes on Twitter, again according to Sensor Tower.
In short, Instagram wins!