Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has passed Elon Musk’s X in monthly active users, the company’s clearest claim yet that its text-based app has overtaken its rival.
“Threads has now overtaken X in monthly actives,” Zuckerberg said on Meta’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Oct. 21, according to a transcript published by The Motley Fool. He did not give a new user figure.
Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said time spent per user on Threads grew more than 20% from a year earlier.
How Threads and X compare
Meta last released a Threads figure in June, when it said the app had reached 500 million monthly active users. X does not publish its own numbers, but a SpaceX filing put X at about 550 million monthly users earlier this year, Social Media Today reported.
Neither company has released figures for the same period, so the two counts cannot be matched directly.
A shift Zuckerberg hinted at in September
Zuckerberg previewed the claim on Alex Heath’s Sources podcast in September. “I think it’s either bigger than X at this point, or it’s like very soon about to be,” he said.
He added that he still posts on both apps because “different communities” gather in each place.
Threads launched in July 2023 and is closely linked to Instagram. When it launched, Zuckerberg set a goal of reaching 1 billion users.
As well Meta disclosed a separate deal to keep Zuckerberg in California as voters weigh a billionaire wealth tax.