FOR MARK ZUCKERBERG'S THREADS, THE REAL RIVAL IS STILL TIKTOK NOT THE FORMER TWITTER

Threads, the simple, bare-bones text-based social network created by Facebook owner Meta, burst onto the scene during a particularly bad week for the rival then still known as Twitter. It quickly amassed 100 million signups — a huge feat for a newcomer in the space — and was dubbed as a “Twitter killer.”

By week two, though, signups began to drop off. As of Aug. 7, the number of people who used Threads daily hovered around 10 million on Android phones, down from 49 million when it launched a month earlier, according to research firm SimilarWeb. Is Mark Zuckerberg’s latest venture just a flash in the pan? That depends on whether it can hold its own against its biggest rival. And no, that’s not X, the former Twitter. It’s TikTok. And the odds are not great.

“Mark Zuckerberg may have temporarily been distracted in his sparring with Elon Musk, but the real battle for Meta is with TikTok,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. “And Zuckerberg still really needs to watch his back.”

It’s true that before TikTok took over the role of digital town square and “originator of trends,” Enberg noted, the role was held by Twitter. But many of the biggest trends now come from people who came of age in the TikTok era — Gen Z and even younger kids and teens. And just as with stodgy Facebook, Twitter usage is also declining among teens, according to data from the Pew Research Center. As such, text-based social media platform may not be all that appealing to the TikTok generation, where dances, makeup tips, outlandish recipes — not to mention the whole idea of de-influencers — spread via videos rather than the written word.