Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads App Struggles to Compete with TikTok Despite Former Twitter Rivalry

Threads, the basic and text-focused social network developed by Meta, the owner of Facebook, gained significant attention during a challenging period for its competitor, Twitter. Surprisingly, it swiftly acquired 100 million registrations, a remarkable achievement for a newcomer, leading to its recognition as a potential threat to Twitter’s dominance.

In the second week, however, registrations began to decrease. As of Aug. 7, Threads had about 10 million daily users on Android phones, up from 49 million when it launched a month earlier, according to research firm LikeWeb. Is Mark Zuckerberg’s latest venture just a flash in the pan? It depends on whether it can hold its own against its biggest rival. And no, it’s not X, formerly Twitter. It’s TikTok. And the odds aren’t great.

“Mark Zuckerberg may have been temporarily distracted in his sparring with Elon Musk, but the real battle for Metasto is with TikTok,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. “And Zuckerberg still really needs to watch his back.”

It’s true that before TikTok took on the role of digital town square and “trendsetter,” Enberg noted, that role belonged to Twitter. But many of the biggest trends are now coming from people who came of age in the TikTok era — Generation Z and even younger kids and teens. And just like in bad Facebook. The use of Twitter is also decreasing among teenagers. According to data from the Pew Research Center. As such, the text-based social media platform may not be very appealing to the TikTok generation, where dances, makeup tips, quirky recipes — not to mention the whole idea of de-influencers — spread through videos rather than the written word.

Regardless of the format, however, Threads’ biggest challenge is “the question of finding a unique identity outside of the Twitter alternative and the Instagram extension,” Enberg said.

So far, it is not clear that it has one. The app garnered a huge initial user base, including well-known celebrities and brands, precisely because it is an extension of Instagram. To sign up for Threads, you need an Instagram account, and it’s easy to switch back and forth between the two. Instagram has well over a billion users (some estimates say closer to 2 billion), and the app has drawn users to Threads with notifications to join their friends.

The question is, what to do when you’re on? So far, Threads’ user base is similar to that of Instagram, and the featured accounts are predictable—celebrities, politicians, news organizations, influencers, and the like. It’s harder to find original posts from regular people, unless the Instagram connections you’re transferring are a chatty — or twisted — bunch. If you sign up without connecting a well-used Instagram account, creating one just so you can join Threads, the experience can feel impersonal and sterile as the app directs you to follow big, popular accounts that everyone else is also following.

While many popular internet celebrities rushed to sign up for Threads and quickly amassed a large following, it’s not clear how many of them return regularly. MrBeast, a popular YouTuber whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has 5 million followers on the app. But he hasn’t posted in two weeks — despite posting several TikToks, tweets (or posts on the site now called X) and an 18-minute video to YouTube, where he has 175 million subscribers.

In a recent conference call, Zuckerberg said he was “optimistic” about Threads, but admitted there was “a lot of work to do” to make it reach its full potential.

“It’s kind of been this weird anomaly in the tech industry that there hasn’t been an app for this kind of public conversation that’s reached a billion people,” he said. “When I look at all the different social experiences, it seems like there should be one.”

Maybe so, but it’s not clear that it will be Threads. As Zuckerberg acknowledged during the same call, Meta has tried “a bunch of independent experiments over time,” but generally hasn’t had much luck. Yes, there is Facebook. But the company bought both Instagram and WhatsApp, two other successful apps. The biggest might be Messenger – but that too started as a service on Facebook before being released as a standalone app.

“(It’s) great that we’re getting a chance to work on this, and I’m really optimistic about where we’re at,” Zuckerberg said. “But there’s a long way to go.”