THREADS UNRAVELING: Traffic on Zuckerberg's Twitter alternative PLUMMETS in second week

Within 48 hours of launching on July 5, Mark Zuckerberg's Threads managed to bring in 100 million users, making it the fastest growing application in history. The initial fanfare was short-lived, however, and Meta's "Twitter alternative" has been on a downward spiral ever since.

Data collected by Similarweb has revealed that traffic on Threads has decreased by more than 50 percent in its second week of operation, though only the numbers only reflect Android users. Apple is scheduled to provide figures for iPhone users in the coming weeks.



According to Similarweb, Threads had more than 49 million active daily users on its busiest day, July 7, but by the following Friday, that number had dipped to just 23.6 million. Time spent also decreased from 20 minutes to five minutes over that same time period.

The app was touted by many on the left as a "Twitter killer," and during the first two days of Threads' existence, web traffic to Twitter did go down by 5 percent, and time spent on the app decreased by 4.3 percent. Both stats have since bounced back, and Twitter has continued to dominate the social media arena.

One of the main appeals of Twitter has been Musk's commitment to free speech, which has allowed discussions of controversial issues to flourish on the platform where they might have been censored on others.

On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan penned a letter to Zuckerberg regarding potential censorship on Threads, asking him to provide details pertaining to any attempts to trample upon users' freedom of speech.

Under Elon Musk, Twitter has made a number of changes aimed at attracting more people to the platform and keeping them engaged, and it appears to be paying off.

On Friday, as Threads suffered, Musk announced that Twitter usage was up 3.5 percent week over week.

The previous day, Musk introduced the Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program, designed to "help people earn a living directly on Twitter."

Since then, numerous creators have posted screenshots of their payouts, some of which are in the thousands of dollars.