I honestly think this is a very silly take. I don't think any of this is how any of this works.
Threads attracted two kinds of people: 1. People coming mostly from instagram / tiktok who had never considered using Twitter because it had an established reputation and they knew it wasn't the kind of product for them, and 2. People switching from Twitter because they love Twitter-the-idea but can no longer stand Twitter-the-actual-product-today.
Most of people from group #1 tried it and concluded that yep, it wasn't for them. There is zero surprising about that, and it's where the giant initial numbers came from. But if any of those people stuck around, that's pure bonus.
The more interesting question is what's going on with group #2. Certainly lots of them decided there were too many missing features at launch and kept using Twitter mostly. But that is not a "they'll never check back", those people are still in play for any of Twitter to keep or its competitors to win eventually. But the current DAUs wouldn't be where they are if a significant portion of this group hadn't decided to actually stick around. And that's pretty surprising.
For years the conventional wisdom has been that you can't actually convert users from one social network to another in the exact same niche. You can cut off growth - like instagram adding stories corresponding to Snapchat's growth plateau - but people stay where their existing networks are.
I think a key strategic weapon that Meta has that no other social media will be able to match is its existing userbase on FB and Insta (i.e. basically all of the 7B+ human population). This can indefinitely be tapped as an audience for Thread content creators and advertisers.
Whereas most social media apps have the cold start problem (the stars need to align such that creators and users show up at the exact same time), Zuckerberg has solved it for Meta.
Threads doesn't need to be a hit on day 1 or even 100 because it has the existing Meta user base that counted on to consume Thread content (whether they like it or not).
For example, I have a FB account but am too lazy/old to sign up for Instagram but I did/do see a lot of Instagram reels that are converted into FB reels - particularly as Instagram reels was starting to take off. I am sure when it is monetizing those views for content creators and advertisers the converted reels get counted.
So while the power Instagram/Thread creaters will likely only push/consume the content in the corresponding app, Meta has the unique platform level ability to push the content to users of all 3 apps (i.e. FB/Insta/Threads).
That second group includes people who post to both and most fall into this group. To someone selling a product this is just another market. To others now is the time to get followers.
What percentage have left twitter for threads? Unknown.
Threads attracted two kinds of people: 1. People coming mostly from instagram / tiktok who had never considered using Twitter because it had an established reputation and they knew it wasn't the kind of product for them, and 2. People switching from Twitter because they love Twitter-the-idea but can no longer stand Twitter-the-actual-product-today.
Most of people from group #1 tried it and concluded that yep, it wasn't for them. There is zero surprising about that, and it's where the giant initial numbers came from. But if any of those people stuck around, that's pure bonus.
The more interesting question is what's going on with group #2. Certainly lots of them decided there were too many missing features at launch and kept using Twitter mostly. But that is not a "they'll never check back", those people are still in play for any of Twitter to keep or its competitors to win eventually. But the current DAUs wouldn't be where they are if a significant portion of this group hadn't decided to actually stick around. And that's pretty surprising.
For years the conventional wisdom has been that you can't actually convert users from one social network to another in the exact same niche. You can cut off growth - like instagram adding stories corresponding to Snapchat's growth plateau - but people stay where their existing networks are.
But not this time!