Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in today’s fourth-quarter earnings report that the number of monthly active users of Instagram Threads has exceeded 130 million. The text-based social networking app is one of many new projects that have emerged since Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now known as
Zuckerberg said Threads is "growing steadily," but he also noted that the app "exploded" before Meta was ready: "I noticed that Threads now has more active users than it did at the peak of its original launch. So I think this product is poised to be a huge success." "
Last quarter, Zuckerberg also spoke highly of Threads, saying he believed the app had a good chance of reaching 1 billion users within a few years. At that time, Threads had nearly 100 million monthly active users.
Meta said its family of apps, which also includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, had 3.19 billion daily users in the fourth quarter, up from 3.14 billion in the quarter ending in September 2023. Monthly active users were 3.98 billion, up from 3.96 billion in the previous quarter.
In recent weeks, we've seen evidence of Threads gaining traction. App intelligence provider Appfigures found that the Instagram-owned app tripled its downloads in December, becoming the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store and Google Play that month, ranking sixth. X, which is still struggling with its rebranding, ranked 36th.
In July last year, Threads leveraged Instagram's friend graph to reach a record high of 100 million registered users in the first five days after its launch. But by the fall, interest in Threads began to wane, until Meta resumed growth by virally promoting Threads to Facebook users. This is likely to help the app rank among the top 10 most downloaded apps in the world in December.
Zuckerberg's comments were likely an attempt to allay concerns about Threads' downturn, when some critics prematurely declared Threads dead. Now that doesn't appear to be the case - third-party trackers say Threads has an estimated total of 160 million users.
As for Meta's earnings, the company achieved revenue of $40.1 billion in the quarter ending in December 2023, which was higher than analysts' expectations of $39.18 billion, and earnings per share of $5.33, which was higher than the expected $4.96. Net profit was US$14.02 billion. Full-year revenue in 2023 is US$134.90 billion.
Meta also announced an initial cash dividend of $0.50 per share to Meta shareholders in March.