Threads' quick rise may be hurting Twitter

The ultrafast growth of Threads looks like it is already taking a toll on Twitter.

- Sarah E. Needleman

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Threads parent Meta Platforms, said the new microblogging platform hit 100 million sign-ups less than a week after launching. At least two third-party estimates suggest Twitter traffic has been falling in tandem, an indication that its users may be leaving it for Threads rather than attempting to juggle both.

Twitter said it had roughly 535 million monetizable monthly active users in June, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

The two products look and function in similar ways. Both focus on sharing short snippets of text but also allow users to post photos and videos. One distinction is that joining Threads requires having an account with Meta's Instagram, which has more than 2 billion monthly users. That has made signing up easy and fast, though deleting a Threads account means also having to delete one's Instagram account.

In the first two days that Threads was fully available, traffic to Twitter's website was down 5% compared with the same two days of the previous week, according to SimilarWeb, which tracks online activity. Year over year, such traffic was down 11%, the firm said.