Short message services: Threads closes to X

There could soon be a neck-and-neck race between Threads and X to see which of the two short messaging services has the most daily active users. According to surveys by market analysis company Similarweb, Threads by Meta now has 115.1 million daily active users with its mobile app, representing year-on-year growth of 127.8 percent. This was reported by the US tech news site Techcrunch. X, meanwhile, shrank by 15.2 percent to 132 million daily active users in the same period.

In addition to its relevance as a platform for politics, business and society, this development is likely to hurt X owner Elon Musk, particularly regarding the marketing of advertising space. One consolation, however, is that the former Twitter remains the undisputed global leader in terms of web usage. Threads only achieves 6.9 million daily visits here, while X has 145.8 million.

Small networks far behind

Another insight that can be drawn from the statistics is that smaller competitors have no chance against the two big players. Bluesky was able to increase its mobile app usage by 372.5 percent to 4.1 million daily active users within a year. However, with 37 million registered users, the decentralized network is a small house number compared to X and Threads. According to Musk, X has around 600 million monthly active users, while Threads has 350 million monthly active users, according to Meta.

Mastodon, which does not even appear in Similarweb's surveys, has 791,380 monthly active users as of July 7, 2025.

The use and popularity of threads could continue to grow as more features are added. Direct messages between users were recently introduced. The "Threads Highlighter" also highlights hot topics in the feed. The network was only launched two years ago and has grown rapidly in that time. Bluesky was expanded to include direct messages back in May 2024.

(mki)