Threads User Engagement Continues to Drop, Adding Urgency for New Features

livemint.com:

User engagement on Threads has continued to fall after an initial surge in sign-ups, putting pressure on parent Meta Platforms to roll out new features for its nascent microblogging app. For a second week in a row, the number of daily active users declined on Threads, falling to 13 million, down about 70% from a July 7 peak, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The average time users spend on the iOS and Android apps has also decreased to four minutes from 19 minutes.

The average time spent for Android users in the U.S. dropped to five minutes from a peak of 21 minutes on launch day, according to SimilarWeb, a digital data and analytics company. Twitter’s daily active users remain steady at about 200 million, and average time spent is at 30 minutes a day, according to Sensor Tower estimates.

Meta executives have said they expected an eventual decline after the app gained more than 100 million sign-ups within a week of its launching earlier this month. They have signaled that they don’t see the falloff as worrisome and have said they are working on additional features. Meta aims to increase the number of users and improve the experience before trying to monetize the platform.

“It’s clear by the drop-off that people are seeing they can’t do as much, and there are certain things that they want to be able to do that perhaps they can do on other apps," said Richard Hanna, a professor at Babson College who studies social-media strategy and digital marketing. There is a need to increase what the app can do, he said. Some writers and reviewers have said that Threads, which was built using Instagram’s infrastructure, might seem dull to certain users if they choose to follow the same people they