Threads, Meta’s Twitter/X rival, is seeing steady growth. The social network now has more than 150 million monthly active users, up from 130 million in February, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned during the company’s first quarter 2024 earnings call.
Since the last quarterly earnings call, Threads has notably taken steps to integrate with ActivityPub, the decentralized protocol that powers networks like Mastodon. In March, the company allowed U.S. users over 18 to connect their accounts to Fediverse so their posts would appear on other servers.
The company also plans to offer its API to a wide range of developers by June, allowing them to create experiences around the social network. However, it’s still unclear whether Threads will allow developers to create full-fledged third-party clients.
Last week, Meta launched its AI chatbot on Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. Threads was a notable exclusion from this list, perhaps due to the lack of native DM features.
On Wednesday, Threads also released a test feature allowing users to automatically archive their posts after a set period of time. They can also archive or unarchive individual posts and make them public.
Threads is about nine months old and Meta has been gradually growing its audience. However, it’s strictly not an X alternative, as Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in October that Threads won’t amplify news on the platform. But Meta’s social network continues to grow. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that, according to app analytics firm Apptopia, Threads now has more daily active users in the United States than X.
techcrunch
