Hacker News Reader

Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Threads has 275 million monthly active users.

Bluesky has now 15 million total users (how many active?)

Mastodon monthly active usage has dropped below 1 million.

I believe Threads active users are artificially conflated with Instagram and Facebook. In all my circles, I don't know anyone who uses Threads

That's my guess. By having either of those accounts you automatically got a threads account.

True. But you don't become an active monthly user. Unless there are some shenanigans happening, which is highly likely. I think I visited Threads by accident several times by clicking posts in IG, that were apparently Threads posts embedded directly into IG as a growth hack (my speculation).

You have to create a Threads account explicitly, it's not automatic from an Instagram or Facebook account.

In all my circles, I don't know a single "X" user. Not even one. Anecdotes are funny like that.

Facebook monthly active users: >3 billion

Instagram monthly active users: >2 billion

Threads monthly active users: ~275 million

If they're cheating, they're doing a poor job of it.

When you post on Instagram, there are opt-out features that will 'automatically share to your Threads account too' and you can see Threads notifications in the Instagram app and such .. so I think it's reasonable to assume they are leveraging the Instagram user-base a bit.

Just double checking - there is an opt-out feature that cross-posts all IG posts to Threads?

No, there isn't, at least not by default. You have to explicitly create a Threads account.

...and once you have a threads account, the UI in instagram pushes you to one-click accept cross-posting everything to Threads

Threads is literally built on Instagram so of course they are leveraging it.

But that's very different from saying that Threads MAUs aren't specific to that platform.

Most people in my circle have given up on Threads (even pre-Bluesky mass migration)

I have reasons to believe your belief is incorrect. Thread's app downloads, number of posts etc. match the MAU numbers.

In all my circles is unreliable argument.

Yes, it's the same argument that people have been making about facebook being dead when it's hitting all time highs.

In my circles no one voted for Trump but well here we are.

I'm not asking you to make any epistemologically unsound leaps, I'm not making an argument. tThis is just my impression. In general, if you're going to rely only on numeric metrics, then you'll be giving up a lot of other helpful information.

You need to use non-numeric information to tell you if "number of posts" should be more meaningful than a HackerNews stranger saying "these are the vibes I get, anecdotally." Numbers are pretty appealing because we have a lot of simple and consistent tools for working with them, but we also know the number of posts on Threads are artificially gamed, because Instagram and Facebook crosspost to Threads by default for anyone who has an account.

But it's still my guess. English is my only fluent language and I don't know even 1000 people. Threads could be wildly popular and I could be blissfully unaware. Again, I'm not asking you to make any epistemologically unsound leaps.

The 15 million figure is several hours out of date, it's currently over 17m. (https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats)

9.4m active this month (and counting), according to https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.d...

Threads artificially juicing their numbers with Instagram integration. I can't remember what it was but recently when posting to Instagram it offered me an option to enable all my posts to automatically cross-post to Threads, very possibly defaulted to "on" too.

> Bluesky has now 15 million total users (how many active?)

That is a very good question. One of the Bluesky developers gave the figure at around 2.25M DAUs [0]

This chart shows that they now have 3.74M DAUs and have 9.3M MAUs [1]

Mastodon does not give their DAUs, but their MAUs are down to less than 1M users. [2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41953421

[1] https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.d...

[2] https://joinmastodon.org/servers

It's more about the vision and momentum

Threads is not trying to be a Twitter replacement and is another brand in the Zuck conglomerate

What makes Bluesky different to me is ATProto and the possibilities for a new social media fabric, that they learned from some difficulties with ActivityPub to build something better

https://atproto.com

The problem with atproto is that it's not better.

I literally forget Threads exists for months at a time.

Nobody I know uses it, or has even acknowledged its existence. I see people on other social media talking about their Bluesky and Mastodon accounts and directing people there, but I have never seen anyone do it for Threads. I have never seen anyone share a link to Threads, I don't even remember what its domain name is. I have never seen Threads included in those little sets of social media icon links that all brand websites have.

I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe Threads has actual users who care about it and aren't just clueless Facebook/Instagram users who were not-so-subtly encouraged to also use Threads by those apps.

You forgot to list one:

X/Twitter has over 500 million monthly active users.

480 million of those are likely bots

Do you have any source for that statement?

X is at 600 million MAU, for reference.

Edit: Thanks @JumpCrisscross.

And minus bots?

No idea but bots are not exclusive to X.

Nope, but I'd wager the share is way higher than on the other services as of right now.

Hmm ... yeah but that's wandering into "the supposition of a supposition" territory.

But they are exclusively the majority on X

600mm*

The trend is what is important. Threads is growing at 1m new users a day.

And at least here in Australia, X is ranked #69 on the App Store. Threads #2.

Year from now, Threads could well be bigger.

App store ranking is kind of irrelevant, it favors new rising platforms, and underestimates an existing platform with a consolidated user base.

App Store ranking isn't entire organic - can be juiced with ads.

The expected trend varies depending on the stage in the curve. Threads is at the size were a positive trend should be exponential. Once you've fully expanded, a positive trend would be a very tiny growth as you've already captured the entire market.

Yeah but what made Twitter twitter wasn't really the usercount, it was the mix of established voices and complete randos mixing. If the journalists and economists and politicians go to Bluesky, it will win. I definitely don't think that's a given but it seems much more plausible now than it did a few months ago.

Bluesky is increasingly getting that way. Every time I check it this week I'm seeing new content from recognizable people. I think at some point there will be a tipping point where Bluesky will have more content and just win outside of alt right circles.

Until they start censoring. Some orgs (like Guardian,) don’t like getting fact checked in real time. Old Twitter is far worse than new Twitter. In the recent old days, you’d get suspended for even debating Covid vaccine safety. Couldn’t even debate it! They even colluded with the U.S. government to silence dissent. Crazy.

You are correct, that was a disgraceful thing for thing for the Trump 1.0 administration to do.

Kim Kardashian is much more important to a social network than any journalist, politician or economist. Perhaps more so than all of them combined.

There are many interest verticals on Twitter like politics, sports, celebrity, influencer, porn etc.

Everyone who has an Instagram account is technically a Threads user as far as I can tell.

They probably are juicing the numbers that way, but the dedicated Threads app is pretty high on the app store charts so evidently people are going out of their way to get it.

YMMV depending on your region but my Play Store "social" chart is currently showing Bluesky at #1, then TikTok, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, X, and Reddit at #7.

They are definitely “growth hacking” as much as possible - I regularly would see 1/3 of a Threads comment in my FB and IG feed and when you click to expand it takes you to the App Store to download the Threads app. I’m not interested so I just back out but I’m sure it works wonders to get their numbers up.

Is instagram usage counted in active threads users? I doubt it

> Is instagram usage counted in active threads users? I doubt it

It is if they have a Threads account and interact with any Threads content on the Instagram app, which is extremely easy to do even accidentally, because they shove it into the Instagram feed and make it look like Instagram content.

I would not be surprised if a large chunk - maybe even the majority - of "Threads users" interact with it exclusively through the Instagram app, with many of them not even fully aware that it's nominally a separate product.

> they shove it into the Instagram feed and make it look like Instagram content.

And also into your notifications now.

Nop. You need to download Threads app and create an account (using your Instagram).

Of course Instagram helps, because they keep showing Threads posts on Instagram, notifications, etc, so people download and create an account, but is not automatic.

Threads is closer to 300m now.

According to Mosseri it is now adding 1m new users a day.

Bluesky has also added 1m new users for each of the past 2 days.

Threads is big in the same way that Facebook is big. No juice, as they say.

is that Threads, or is that Instagram and Threads? Kind of a cheat without calling that out

Many of these alternatives are piggybacking off the parent site. Google at pone point made anyone with a Gmail account a default user for its own social network.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com