Terrific Traction: Threads Dominates X with Triple the Daily Downloads on iOS

It is said that an app’s downloads can serve as a glimpse into the future of the market, although they may not be a precise measure of its usage. And in the battle of alt-Twitter, Instagram’s Threads is currently the winning contender in terms of app downloads. Meta’s take on Twitter now surpasses X (previously known as Twitter) by three times in terms of daily downloads on a global scale for iOS. On Google Play, the difference is more than double, and sometimes even triple the number of installs.

This was not always the case. Threads saw a steep increase in new installs after its public launch in the summer of 2023. However, as the months passed, the downloads would spike and then drop as parent company Meta experimented with various strategies to steer more traffic towards the new app. These included featuring popular Threads on the timelines of its other apps, Facebook and Instagram. As the initial boosts from these efforts diminished, Threads’ downloads would once again become equal to X’s installs, particularly on iOS, according to data from Appfigures.

But towards the end of the last year, things began to change.

By late December, Threads was seeing over half a million daily installs on both Google Play and iOS. While the latter has slightly decreased in the month of January, Threads consistently sees more downloads than X across both platforms. It appears that the gap is widening between the two apps.

For instance, on February 25, 2024, Threads had 486,803 installs on Google Play and 342,228 on iOS. For the same day, X had 225,408 Google Play downloads and 112,625 on iOS, according to data from Appfigures. That is nearly three times the number of iOS downloads for Threads and more than double on Google Play.

Just a few days prior, on February 22, the difference was even greater. Threads had 382,999 daily installs on iOS, while X only had 113,649 installs on the same platform – more than triple the number. As for Google Play, Threads had 660,882 downloads compared to X’s 210,475 – also more than triple.

Although Threads’ daily install rates still fluctuate, they remain consistently above X’s. Over time, this trend could also potentially impact the number of active monthly users. If this were to occur, Threads would become the preferred microblogging platform for most users, despite Twitter’s longstanding dominance in this space. Furthermore, it would give Meta more control over the information-sharing and news ecosystem used by journalists, researchers, academics, news enthusiasts, and others. And according to Meta, the platform will not amplify news or recommend political content on Threads.

During the company’s fourth quarter, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads had 130 million active monthly users (MAUs). It’s safe to say that these numbers have increased in the weeks since. Instagram head Adam Mosseri mentioned that Threads is performing exceptionally well in Japan – a market where Twitter has had a strong foothold.

In comparison, during autumn of last year, X mentioned that they had 500 million monthly active users. However, it is unclear how many of those accounts were automated or spam. Last month, TechCrunch reported that X appeared to have a problem with verified bots. Many blue-checked, paid accounts accidentally revealed their source by responding to X posts with a standard reply: “I’m sorry, I cannot provide the requested feedback as it goes against OpenAI’s content policy.” A search for the same phrase on X’s platform shows that the issue persists.

Although Threads is not immune to this problem, more people seem to be posting this phrase organically on Meta’s platform as a joke for their followers.

In part, X’s difficulties with new installs could be related to its rebranding from Twitter. Despite a slight increase in downloads from December to January, they are still much lower than before the rebranding, as pointed out by Appfigures. While Threads’ revenue also slightly increased in January compared to the previous month, the firm estimates that February’s revenue will decrease.

As for decentralized alternatives to X, like Mastodon’s official mobile app and the newly launched Bluesky, they have not made a significant impact on the competition. These apps appear as largely flat lines on the download chart. It should be noted that Mastodon does have a substantial third-party app ecosystem, but overall, its network has only around 1 million active monthly users currently, according to their own data.

Bluesky did experience a small spike when it became available to the public earlier this month, but its momentum has since decreased. On its most significant day (February 7 – the day after its launch), it had 79,685 installs on iOS and 55,711 on Google Play – nowhere near Threads’ or X’s numbers. Nonetheless, it is still early days for this social network, which has also opened up federation, allowing anyone to run their own Bluesky server. It is possible that it will gain traction over time as an alternative to decentralized Twitter and X.