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Meta’s efforts to boost the install base of Instagram Threads, positioned as an alternative to Twitter, have been successful, surpassing X (formerly Twitter) in new downloads. Threads’ daily downloads have surged to 620,000, rebounding from a decline since September. Despite attributing the spike to Meta’s advertising, Threads continues to outpace X, with 41 million new downloads compared to X’s 27 million since September. 

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Meta’s recent attempts to increase Threads’ install base have been successful. Instagram Threads is now surpassing X, formerly Twitter, at least in terms of new downloads, per a recent study of app store trends. Although Threads’ daily downloads had been dropping since September, according to app intelligence firm Apptopia, things have been going in the other way for the past week or so. In particular, daily downloads have increased to 620,000 since Thursday, November 23, from approximately 350,000 in early November and approximately 1 million in early September.

Even though the company believes that Meta’s recent spike in downloads of Threads is probably the result of the latter’s advertising for its new app, which aims to provide an alternative to Twitter, Threads continues to lead X in terms of new app downloads.

According to the company, X has had 27 million new downloads since September, while Threads has had 41 million. The downloads of X’s app for emerging markets, Twitter Lite, which has not yet been renamed to X, are also included in these metrics. It’s possible that more installs of Twitter Lite are occurring as users search for the app in the app store using its previous name, “Twitter.”

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Furthermore, Threads is gaining popularity outside of the United States. According to the data, India is the primary source of new Threads downloads, contributing 11.2% or 9.2 million of all new downloads. With 6.1 million downloads, or 7.4% of all downloads, the United States ranked second. Given that India has been the main Instagram growth engine, according to Apptopia, this trend might not come as a surprise.

In the meantime, the United States isn’t the main source of new X downloads. Rather, it’s Indonesia, then India. However, the company discovered that India alone added more new downloads for Threads than the United States, Indonesia, and India combined did for X.

Apptopia speculates that the rebranding, which resulted in the app now known as X losing a lot of momentum in terms of growth, is the cause of the decline in new downloads for X. To help the app rank higher in searches for the term “Twitter,” X actually added the phrase “formerly Twitter” to its App Store description in late September. The change was made in response to a decline in weekly active users and rankings following the rebrand, as noted at the time by app store analytics company Sensor Tower. It was discovered that while X’s ranking was declining, “Twitter Lite” was rising, probably as a result of people trying to download the Twitter app.

.. According to Sensor Tower, this resulted in a 350% increase in Twitter Lite installs during the first week of the rebranding.

However, in comparison to Threads, even those misplaced installs are now not helping X with regard to new installs in their entirety.

Even so, X continues to be a more expansive platform than Threads, and it has also remained relatively sticky, preventing many of its long-time users from completely switching to other platforms. As of Meta’s most recent earnings in October, Threads reported fewer than 100 million monthly active users, whereas X boasts over 500 million. That is, nevertheless, a sizable gain for an app that had only been available for three months at the time of launch. According to an independent tracker from Quiver Quantitative, as of November 10, there were 141 million users on Threads. 

Today, major brands like Apple, IBM, Disney, Paramount, Comcast/NBCU, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, Sony, and, more recently, Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media and Walmart, have pulled their campaigns from the platform, casting doubt on X’s future as a business. Following his antisemitic posts, Elon Musk, the owner of X, advised brands quitting the platform to “go f*** yourself” in an interview at The New York Times DealBook conference on November 29. 

Notwithstanding these problems, X has demonstrated that it is still a place where news breaks frequently, as evidenced by the drama in the OpenAI boardroom that occurred before the American Thanksgiving holiday. As with other social media platforms, there was some discussion about the events on Threads, but the majority of the major activity, such as new announcements and messages to the OpenAI team, was posted on X. This resulted from the fact that many news announcements still originate from X, and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri stated that Threads would not amplify news in an effort to compete with X in terms of real-time. 

A “substantial safety loophole” would be created, according to Mosseri, if Threads’ search results weren’t chronological. This would enable spammers and other bad actors to gamify results by adding relevant words and tags. Mosseri made this announcement last week.