Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has said that the majority of users stopped using the company’s newest social networking site, Threads. Within five days of its inception earlier this month, the Twitter competitor had gained more than 100 million members.
However, Mr Zuckerberg has admitted that those figures have now dropped.
“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”, said Mark Zuckerberg.
Read also: All you need to know about Meta’s Threads app
In a call with staff, Mr Zuckerberg characterized the current situation as “normal” and predicted that retention would increase as new features were introduced to the app.
When it first rolled out, Threads received criticism for its lack of features. Since then, Meta has expanded its capabilities, including the ability to translate postings into several languages and the addition of specialized “following” and “for you” feeds.
Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer, recently informed employees that the organisation will be putting more effort into developing “retention-driving hooks” to keep users engaged. He cited “ensuring that Instagram users are exposed to relevant Threads” as an example.
A week ago, Zuckerberg also made some releases on the company’s developing features.
Development of new features
Because of the tight integration between the two platforms, Instagram profiles are required to join Threads. Mark Zuckerberg also gave an update on the company’s massive investment in the Metaverse, a virtual reality environment that has not yet been built.
To power it, developers are working on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies, he said, adding that they are “not massively ahead of schedule, but on track” and that widespread adoption likely won’t occur until the next decade.
Given the multi-billion dollar losses piled up by Reality Labs, which manufactures VR headsets and other goods, this forecast may heighten worries that Meta has focused too much on the Metaverse.
Read also: Meta announces Threads; new competitor to Twitter
Overall, however, the company’s financial performance remains strong, as seen by last week’s announcement that it turned a quarterly profit of $7.79 billion. In addition to discussing his planned cage match with fellow tech tycoon Elon Musk, Mr. Zuckerberg also addressed another subject that has garnered media attention.
In June, the two guys made it clear from behind their screens that they were interested in moving further and recommending a site in Las Vegas. Nonetheless, Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged he was “not sure if it’s going to come together” when questioned about it on the call.