Threads just announced it had more than 35 million signups in November

Threads just announced that it has experienced significant growth throughout November, to the tune of 35 million signups. A platform spokesperson told Engadget that the social media app has received more than a million signups every single day for the past three months. To that end, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced 15 million signups for November in the middle of the month. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently informed investors that the app had over 275 million monthly active users.

There’s one likely reason Threads is crowing like this. Rival social media app Bluesky has been rapidly growing and snagging a whole lot of positive press. However, it’s worth noting that Bluesky just passed the 20 million user mark, which my advanced math skills tell me is much lower than 275 million. Threads garnered 20 million users in around a day after launching, though it has the entire weight of Meta behind it, and both Facebook and Instagram display posts from the app to pull in new users. Bluesky basically has word of mouth and a collective seething hatred of X

Threads has also begun to copy some of the pre-existing features from Bluesky. The platform recently introduced custom feeds and the ability to change the default feed to people you follow. Mosseri admitted that it had started “pulling forward” certain features that “were already in the works.” In other words, it’s certainly feeling some kind of heat.

This tells me that Meta thinks there can be just one short-form, text-based social media app to rule public attention. Both platforms want to be the next X, now that X is a sludge-filled cesspool of grievance, pornbots and off-putting advertisements. The platform is also home to a whole bunch of Nazis.