Threads Continues to Gain Ground on X with Over 350 Million Monthly Users
Although it still has some catching up to do, Threads is steadily narrowing the gap with X (formerly Twitter) in terms of user engagement. Meta’s text-based social platform has now surpassed 350 million monthly active users, according to the company’s latest earnings report.
The update also revealed a 35% boost in time spent on the app, which Meta attributes to ongoing enhancements in its recommendation algorithms.
A Meta representative noted:
“As more users engage in dynamic conversations and connect within communities on Threads, we believe it’s well on its way to becoming Meta’s next major social platform — and a strong contender among text-based sharing apps, including X.”
While Threads is working to carve out its own niche, it’s evident that challenging X’s dominance remains one of its strategic goals.
And although it hasn’t overtaken its rival just yet, Threads is consistently moving in that direction.
X’s User Claims Raise Eyebrows Despite Reported Lead Over Threads
As illustrated in the chart, X recently asserted that it has hit 600 million monthly active users — nearly double the user base that Threads currently reports. However, there’s reason to be skeptical about the accuracy of these numbers.
For instance, Elon Musk claimed back in May 2024 that X had reached the 600 million mark. Yet, official figures shared by X around the same time indicated a total closer to 550 million users. That discrepancy raises questions about the reliability of the platform’s self-reported metrics — which already seem somewhat speculative to begin with.
Why X’s Bot Problem Casts Doubt on Its Reported User Metrics
One of the reasons former Twitter leadership was reluctant to take strong action against bot accounts was the potential impact on its usage statistics. For years, Twitter appeared to include at least some automated profiles in its monthly active user counts, which helped maintain more favorable performance figures.
Former CEO Jack Dorsey hinted at this back in 2022, when Elon Musk first expressed interest in acquiring the platform. Responding to a question about bot removal, Dorsey suggested that Twitter needed to go private to have the “cover” necessary for a deep internal overhaul — essentially admitting that removing bots would hurt public metrics and damage the company’s stock value.
During his own due diligence before finalizing the $44 billion acquisition, Musk estimated that as much as 33% of Twitter’s users could be bots. He later revised this figure down to 20%, though he continued to claim that the true number was “much higher.”
After taking over, Musk initiated several waves of bot purges, claiming to have removed millions of fake accounts. Yet curiously, despite this supposed mass cleanup, X’s active user numbers didn’t drop — they actually increased in official reports.
This raises a significant question: If Musk was eliminating millions of accounts that were previously considered active, how did the platform’s usage metrics improve?
The only logical explanation would be that X was adding legitimate new users at a rate that offset the bot removals. However, this theory becomes shaky when you consider that X has lost 17 million users in Europe since Musk took the helm — the only region where it discloses verified active user data.
This inconsistency suggests that X’s oft-cited 600 million monthly active user count may be inflated, and if that’s the case, Threads could be much closer to catching up than many observers realize.
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