‘Thread’ Troubles: Shrinking User Base in Copycat App Leads Zuckerberg to Scramble for ‘Retention Hooks’, Improve Lackluster Features

Lauded by leftists and globalists of all stripes as the ‘Twitter/X-killer’ alternative, Meta’s hastily put together knock-off copy app ‘Threads’ has been losing users in a rapid pace, leading Meta executives to rush to develop ways to retain the fleeing public.

Reuters reported:

“Meta Platforms executives are heavily focused on boosting retention on their new Twitter rival Threads, after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its buzzy launch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees on Thursday.”

Zuckerberg stated this on Friday, at an internal company ‘town hall’.

“‘Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet’, he said.

Zuckerberg said he considered the drop-off ‘normal’ and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality.

Meta is looking at adding more ‘retention-driving hooks’ to entice users to return to the app, like ‘making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads’, said Chief Product Officer Chris Cox.”

This meeting comes after shares surged 8% on Thursday on a positive revenue growth forecast, after the hefty spending on the flopped ‘metaverse’ last year.

Zuckerberg also highlighted the release of an artificial intelligence model called Llama 2.

It will be made freely available for commercial use to any developer whose services had fewer than 700 million users.

BBC reported:

“Threads was criticized for the limited functionality it had when it launched.

Meta has since added new features, such as separate ‘following’ and ‘for you’ feeds, and increased scope to translate posts into different languages.”

Zuckerberg also updated employees on the company’s enormous (and so far unsuccessful) bet on the virtual reality world Metaverse.

“He said work on the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology that would power it was ‘not massively ahead of schedule, but on track’, adding that he didn’t anticipate it going mainstream until the next decade.

That prediction may intensify concerns that Meta has dedicated too much time and money to the Metaverse – its Reality Labs division, which produces VR headsets and other products, has racked up multi-billion dollar losses.“

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