The number of Threads users has dropped by half

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the new social network has lost more than half of its users. After we wrote about the milestone of 100 million users in the first five days of its release, Zuckerberg has now surprised the public by declaring that the number is plummeting. “If you get 100 million people to sign up, in an ideal scenario it would be great if those people, or at least half of them, stay. So far, we're not that far," says Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg - who commented on the situation in a call with employees that was also listened to by the Reuters news agency - described the development as "normal" and said he expected user retention to level off as new features are added to the app.

At the time of its release, there were already many criticisms about the limited functionality of the Threads platform. They came both from the general public and from the profession. Meta has since added new features, such as separate "following" and "for you" feeds, and expanded the scope to translate posts into different languages.

Chris Cox, the company's chief product officer, told employees that they are now focusing on adding more features to keep people on the platform, while also wanting to win back those who have left the platform.

He gave the example of "making sure people who are in the Instagram app can see important Threads posts". The two platforms are closely linked - if users want to log in to Threads, they must also have an Instagram account.

Among other things, Zuckerberg also shared with the employees the innovations in the field of virtual reality development, a world that was called the Metaverse and, of course, has not yet been created.

He said that they are well on their way and are working rapidly on virtual reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies, which are the basis for Metaverse. He added that he does not expect the technology to become "mainstream" until the beginning of the next decade.

The announcement may heighten concerns that Meta has devoted too much time and money to Metaspace — its Reality Labs division, which makes VR devices and other similar products, has racked up multibillion-dollar losses.

Regardless, the Meta as a whole is still doing well. They recently released their financial results for the last quarter, reporting a profit of $7.79 billion.