TO Wall Street Journal article on Friday warns that Instagram’s new Twitter competitor, Threads, is already losing steam. Citing third-party data from Sensor Tower, the paper reports that the number of daily active users on Threads dropped for a second week to 13 million, a 70% decline from a July 7 high. By comparison, Twitter’s daily active users are around 200 million. Despite this seemingly worrying trend, it’s too early to rule out Threads just yet. By other metrics, the app continues to grow its user base and traction in global markets, which could also boost usage over time, especially as the app’s feature set improves.

A highly anticipated new app is expected to see stellar usage numbers in its first few days as users set up their accounts, find and follow friends, and test out the app’s capabilities. As the novelty wears off, it’s also typical to see usage numbers drop as users revert to their old habits while determining if and how they will continue to integrate the new app into their daily routines. Furthermore, the WSJ notes, Meta executives said they planned for an eventual decline and do not view this drop in usage as worrisome.

Us neither. Threads is still too new and too incomplete to make any kind of determination about its ultimate fate. Could it be an early record that ultimately flopped? Sure. But it could also be a legit Twitter killer or mid-tier hit. It’s too soon to say that.

thrown out on July 5 to global markets, excluding the EU, Threads exceeded 100 million users within days of its arrival, becoming the fastest app to achieve that milestone, ahead of Pokémon GO, according to the app intelligence firm. data.ai. During its first three days, it had 18.3% of Twitter’s daily active users, or 54.4 million to Twitter’s 298 million. Last week, data.ai estimated that the app still had about one fifth of Twitter’s weekly active user base.

App installs for Threads peaked on July 9, a few days after its launch, when 24.5 million people downloaded the app worldwide on iOS and Android, data.ai says. But while the initial enthusiasm may be fading, the app has continued to rack up more than 1 million new downloads daily for the past few days, from 1.76 million on July 16 to 1.06 million on July 20, for example. Any new app on the market would be delighted to see numbers like these, though perhaps Threads should be judged more harshly because it has the advantage of the network effects offered by the nature of its parent app Instagram and the broader resources of Meta.

Data.ai estimates that the app has now seen 185.32 million cumulative global downloads.

Another key point to note is that Threads is catching on in emerging mobile markets where downloads continue to grow. The United States is only its third-largest market, data.ai analysis shows. As of July 17, India and Brazil accounted for the largest number of installations, with 60.1 million (32.6%) and 40.2 million (21.8%), respectively. The United States delivered 27.8 million downloads or 15.1%. That is why the analysis company Similarweb’s Analysis of declines in Android usage in the US (21 minutes on July 7 to 6 minutes on July 14) cannot tell the whole story.

While Threads’ usage may be down for now, as Sensor Tower data shows, its early usage numbers demonstrated its potential as a rival to Twitter. In its early days on the market, Threads users spent an average of 15 minutes per day in the app, across 9.4 app sessions. That’s more than averages for the “microblogging” category, which data.ai says includes Twitter, Truth Social, Mastodon and Bluesky. Microblogging users then spent 12.5 minutes per day, on average, in 7.8 app sessions.

What’s stopping people from using Threads more of late may not be the disappointment with the concept of the app itself, but rather its current feature set, compared to Twitter. Threads, while now publicly available, is still a beta, unfinished app, lacking a number of features users want in a microblogging tool, such as a chronological timeline, news tracking, the ability to view your likes, a fully functional web version, an edit button, multiple account support, and more. These features are still in the works, along with the planned integration of Threads with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers the open source Twitter alternative Mastodon.

In one thread in Threads (ha), in fact, users were quick to defend the app against the narrative that the app was dead, commenting that people should be more patient and wait for necessary features, and reminding others that even Instagram wasn’t an overnight success.

Another post, headed by social media consultant Matt NavarraHe asked “the threads are…” To this, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri replied “a work in progress”. In hundreds of other responses, many posted positive messages, calling the app an “opportunity,” better than Twitter, an “inspirational,” “exciting,” and more—an indication that Threads is already building a community of fans.

Another indication is the app’s US App Store rating, a 3.8-star rating on 20,000 reviews. Digging deeper into where it’s losing points, it seems that many of those downgrading the app are doing so due to its incomplete nature, calling it a “promising start” but taking stars off for lack of certain features. By comparison, Instagram has a 4.7 star rating and Facebook has a 2.3 star rating. Another thing Threads has going for it, based on these reviews and other online conversations, is that the app, for now, feels “less toxic” than Twitter, as several users have commented.

While Twitter users They’re already dancing on Threads’ graveThanks to The WSJ’s report, the reality is that it’s too early to report on the second week decline in Threads usage and conclude that Threads is dying. An app that breaks records early on and continues to add users still has a ways to go and time to deliver the features people want, to regain traction.

Even seven-year-old Mastodon, Twitter’s decentralized social media rival, continues to grow in the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter missteps. After the acquisition of Twitter, Mastodon peaked at 2.5 million monthly active users. When Threads, released, Mastodon had dropped to 1.7 million monthly users. Since then it has started to grow again, now seeing 2.1 million monthly active users. These things come and go.

There’s also an online culture that’s more willing to experiment with new apps, whether they’re Twitter alternatives like Threads and Bluesky, Reddit alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin, or new ways to network like TikTok instead of the old-fashioned Facebook.

Also, for Threads to succeed, Twitter doesn’t have to fail completely. Users can choose between them or they can use both. It is not necessarily a zero sum game.

That said, Meta doesn’t have a great track record of launching successful new apps, having shut down almost everything it created (rather than just acquired) over the years. Threads could one day become another app added to your graveyard.

But in the meantime, an app with now an estimated 116 million users and growing up is far from “dead.”