By Michael Ainomugisha.
While many Ugandans jumped on the Meta Inc owned threads and later run away, there has been a few that have been able to witness the #TwitterKiller make it to its first anniversary.
Meta’s Threads now has more than 175 million monthly active users, Mark Zuckerberg announced last week on Wednesday.
The social media platform was launched on July 3, 2023, at a time when users were looking for an alternative to X (formerly Twitter) after Elon Musk introduced sweeping changes to the social network.
While threads celebrates a one year anniversary, it is just three quarters of the 600 million monthly active users on X. It is worth mentioning that Musk didn’t clarify if the number includes automated accounts or spam bots when he announced the 600 active users mark.
As part of Zuckerberg’s announcement, Meta revealed insights into how people are using Threads. Meta says most people are coming to Threads for text rather than images, noting that 63% of all Threads posts are text-only.
The ratio of images on threads is at one in four posts described in relation to those with text.
The company also says more than 50 million Tags have been created, with the top three being PhotographyThreads, BookThreads and GymThreads.
While the metric of monthly active users alone isn’t enough to fully gauge how well Threads is doing, it does show that the platform has a notable amount of users checking it out.
It is also important to note that part of Threads’ success is likely due to the fact that the platform is somewhat integrated and promoted within Instagram.
Since its launch, the app has been fair to its loyal users by introducing numerous of their requested features such as web app, trends, and an edit button that is free to every user on threads unlike on X.
Although the platform is looking to somewhat align its experience and features with those on X, it is staying away from political discourse. While Meta says it won’t amplify news in Threads, X remains the most popular platform for people to discuss live events like the recent Kenyan demonstrations that saw Kenya reject the financial bill 2024 , US presidential debate and online exhibitions here in Uganda.
