Meta's Twitter/X rival, Threads, is growing at a steady pace. The social network now has more than 150 million monthly active users, up from 130 million in February, Mark Zuckerberg said in the company's first quarter 2024 financial results. mentioned at the press conference.
Since its last quarterly earnings report, Threads has made significant progress toward integrating with ActivityPub, a decentralized protocol that powers networks such as Mastodon. In March, the company began allowing U.S.-based users age 18 and older to connect their accounts to Fediverse, allowing their posts to appear on other servers.
The company also plans to release an API to a wide range of developers by June, allowing them to build experiences around the social network. However, it is still unclear whether Threads will allow developers to create full-fledged third-party clients.
Last week, Meta launched an AI chatbot that spans Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. It's worth noting that Threads was excluded from this list. This is likely due to the lack of native DM functionality.
On Wednesday, Threads also released a test feature that allows users to auto-archive their posts after a defined period of time. You can also archive or unarchive and publish individual posts.
Threads has been around for about nine months, but Meta has been steadily growing its audience. However, this isn't strictly an alternative to X, as Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in October that threads don't “amplify news on the platform.” But Meta's social network is still going strong. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that Threads now has more daily active users than X in the U.S., according to app analytics firm Apptopia.