2 min Applications

Meta to bring ailing Threads to Europe in December

Meta to bring ailing Threads to Europe in December

Meta plans to launch Threads in Europe in December. The service, mostly seen as the alternative to X (formerly Twitter), could use a new boost.

In the middle of this year, Threads launched as Meta’s intended competitor to X, which has had a tumultuous existence since its acquisition by Elon Musk. The move resulted in 1 million signups within an hour and 100 million within a week, while the app had yet to launch within the European Union. The reason appeared to be that Meta could not guarantee that the data of European users would stay within Europe’s confines, something EU regulations require.

Now it seems that an EU launch of Threads is imminent, as reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Currently, the service has just under 100 million active users, according to Meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg. However, analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates Threads currently has a significant, but slightly less impressive 73 million unique visitors per month. At the moment, Zuckerberg still has some serious ambitions regarding the future of the social media platform, targeting 1 billion users within the next few years.

Ailing numbers, will Europe provide the necessary boost?

A month after the launch of Threads, the numbers were in: 79 percent of its initial userbase had already abandoned the platform. Since deleting a Threads account also means closing the linked Instagram profile, few users will have chosen to do so. Thus, Thread’s many theoretical users couldn’t easily get rid of their connection to the platform. Meta does promise that account deletion will soon be an option, even including the removal of all user data. This option will also have been developed with EU regulation in mind.

Speaking to WSJ, independent tech analyst Debra Aho Williamson states that the European launch could provide an additional 40 million users. That will be a much needed boost to compete with X, as there are currently 365 million monthly users on Musk’s platform. Other somewhat worrisome numbers for Meta have to do with low engagement relative to the competition, measured in duration of visits. In fact, a user is measured to spend an average of 12 times as much time on X as on Threads.

Also read: Criticism of Meta’s subscription model is increasing