Threads, the much-vaunted but rarely used Twitter rival from Instagram, is testing a new Search version enabling users to search using text and it has launched a web version.
Threads launched its desktop web service last week but it appears to have had little impact on its usage numbers. While traffic to its website jumped by 20 per cent following the news compared to the week before, the overall traffic bump was just three per cent.
However, mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported earlier this month that Threads’ daily active users had dropped 82 per cent since launch, and there were now just eight million users accessing the app daily.
Launching the new search feature, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a relatively lame meme with users piling on in the comments asking for all the features that Twitter already has.
Post by @zuckView on Threads
It caused much brouhaha when it launched but it seems very few are convinced on Threads’ usefulness just yet.
Analytics company Similarweb said that the week-over-week gain in Threads website visitors in the U.S. (+133,400) was larger than the drop in active app users (-82,400), but it doesn’t have a way of determining the overlap between these two figures. However, said that it believes that the data indicates that current Threads users were moving from the app to the web.
It also said that Android app data showed Threads users were down 15 per cent worldwide during the same week-over-week comparison.