Zuckerberg Believes Threads Could Have One Billion Users Despite Drop in Users

Threads could surpass one billion users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during the company’s second quarter earnings call on Wednesday. 

In a call with investors, the CEO was optimistic when asked about his expectations for the long-term success of the new social media platform.  

He responded by saying it’s a “weird anomaly in the tech industry that there hasn’t been an app like this for text-based convos that has reached 1 billion people.” 

“I’m highly confident we’re going to be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow,” he added. 

Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, surpassed projected earnings during its second quarter, with a total revenue of $32 billion and a net income of $7.78 billion, despite losing $3.7 billion in its Metaverse division according to the company's earnings report.  

“We remain fully committed to the metaverse vision,” Zuckerberg assured investors in the call. “This is going to be the biggest headset that we've released since 2020.” 

Threads Experiences 50% Drop in Active Users 

While Zuckerberg expressed optimism about the future of Threads, the social media platform has hit some roadblocks, losing over half of its user base.  

"Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," he told employees during an internal company town hall as reported by Reuters. 

Still, the CEO considered the drop in numbers to be “normal” and better than what he and executives had expected. Additionally, he believes the retention will grow as Threads introduces more features – or what the company calls “retention-driving hooks” into its platform.  

Last week, the up-and-coming social media app had its first major update and gave users a new “Following” tab that showed them posts from accounts they follow in chronological order. 

Part of these retention-driving hooks include a desktop version of the app and improved search functions, which Zuckerberg said will come soon.