Meta’s Zuckerberg Says Threads on Right ‘Trajectory,’ Has ‘Good Chance’ of Reaching 1 Billion Users

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at an event in New York City, on Oct. 25, 2019. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes the company’s newest social media platform, Threads, has a “good chance” of reaching one billion users within a few years and is moving along the right trajectory.

Mr. Zuckerberg made the comments during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Oct. 26, when he also announced that Threads has “just under” 100 million monthly users.

“We’re three months in now, and I’m very happy with the trajectory, and we’re now getting to the point where we’re going to be focusing on growing the community further,” the Meta CEO said.

“From what we can tell, people love it so far. I’ve thought for a long time that there should be a billion-person public conversations app that is a bit more positive. And I think that if we keep at this for a few more years, then I think we have a good chance of achieving our vision there,” Mr. Zuckerberg continued.

Meta CFO Susan Li echoed Mr. Zuckerberg’s remarks during the call, stating that Threads “remains a compelling long-term opportunity, and we’re excited to build on the strong product momentum we have going into next year.”

Threads was launched in July and marketed as a rival to Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), prompting the latter to threaten legal action against Meta Platforms over what it said were “serious concerns” that Meta has engaged in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” in making the “copycat ‘Threads’ app.”

Threads Engagement Declines

The microblogging platform initially proved popular, garnering 100 million sign-ups, but quickly saw engagement drop off. According to a July report from The Wall Street Journal citing data from market intelligence firm Sensor Towers, the new platform lost 70 percent of its daily users just two weeks after launching, leaving roughly 13 million people using it on a daily basis.

Mr. Zuckerberg did not mention the number of monthly active Thread users during Thursday’s earnings call, which may differ from the number of monthly users.

In September, Mr. Musk said Twitter (now X) has nearly 550 million monthly users who generate 100 million to 200 million posts per day, although multiple reports claim that figure is closer to 245 million.

While Meta has continued to add a string of new features to Threads, including enabling users to share a Threads post to their Instagram direct messages and a “mention” button, among others, one thing the platform is currently contending with is its inability to operate in Europe due to new regulations, specifically Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Meta ‘Hopeful’ About Threads Expanding to Europe

The DMA, passed last year, establishes a set of “clearly defined objective criteria” to identify so-called digital “gatekeepers”—large digital platforms such as Meta and TikTok providing services search as search engines or messenger services.

The regulation aims to make large players in the digital arena “fairer and more contestable,” although many American platforms have argued the measure could threaten innovation while forcing them to fork out billions more a year in administrative costs.

In a Threads post on Wednesday, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said he’s “hoping we can land support for Europe, early Fediverse progress, better Instagram integrations, and trends in the next few months.”

Also on Thursday, Meta reported earnings of just over $34 billion in revenue, marking a 23 percent increase from the year-ago quarter, and an increase of 21 percent year over year on a constant currency basis.

The company also reported net income of nearly $11.6 billion, more than doubling its profits compared to the year-ago quarter.

However, it is still losing billions of dollars on its Reality Labs division, with the company said lost more than $3.7 billion during the September quarter, up from a $3.67 billion loss in the year-ago quarter.

The company said Thursday it expects Reality Labs operating losses “to increase meaningfully year over year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”

Meta stock is up roughly 140 percent this year.