How did Meta’s Threads become as popular as X

After Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and turned it into X, Meta created a competing social network called Threads. It immediately overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the fastest app to reach 100 million registrations.

Since then, Meta and the rest of Silicon Valley have moved away from social media and focused on artificial intelligence. Threads lost focus.

Even so, the platform never stopped growing. Last month, Meta reported that Threads had amassed 500 million users, a milestone that makes it as popular as Mr. Musk’s X.

Threads is now increasingly reminiscent of Reddit’s social message board, just like X. Users gravitate to specific communities on the platform, rather than a news feed, to discuss TV episodes, game recaps, celebrity gossip and current events. Popular topics include K-pop, WNBA, dating, drama books, and TV shows like “Heated Rivalry.”

Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, nurtured Threads by positioning it as a conversational space where news and politics are discussed but not the main draw. The company has built features around the ways people use the text app, such as dedicated community sections, rewarding the best posters with badges, and allowing people to customize their own algorithms.

Connor Hayes, head of Threads, said the platform grew with a guiding principle: “Follow user intent.” It has set a target of reaching one billion users, he added. If Threads reaches that goal, it will be bigger than Snapchat, which has 956 million users, according to financial filings.

“The way we describe what success looks like is we want to be the biggest and best platform for public conversation,” Mr. Hayes, 37, said in an interview.

Threads underscores Meta’s social media strengths in the age of artificial intelligence and continues the company’s hot trend of social apps used by millions of people. The success renews questions about whether Meta can move beyond its social networking roots.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has tried to push his company into other areas such as metaverse and AI in recent years, but had mixed results when Meta discontinued its flagship metaverse platform in March and battled Google, Anthropic and OpenAI in AI. Recently, Mr. Zuckerberg pushed Meta to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, popular prediction markets.

Mr Zuckerberg tempered expectations for Threads, saying it could be the “fifth great app in the family of apps” after Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger. On a recent call with investors, he mentioned AI 49 times. He mentioned Threads twice.

Threads “is not a massive project,” he said in July 2023. “Over time, you should expect us to focus on AI and metaversions.”

Still, Melissa Otto, head of research at S&P Global Visible Alpha, said Threads became an interesting story for Meta, showing momentum and growth. “It’s probably a slow build compared to the size and scope of their other apps, but the potential is there,” she said.

Threads, which debuted in 2023, was originally powered by Instagram, which promoted the app to its three billion users. Users had to link their Instagram accounts to log into their Threads account and couldn’t delete one without deleting the other.

At the time, Threads was overseen by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram. Last July, Mr. Zuckerberg appointed Mr. Hayes, a former vice president for generative AI, to lead Threads as a standalone platform.

In October, Mr. Hayes introduced community features to Threads, such as giving some groups their own official in-app channels. In December, Threads began providing “Community Champions,” which are the most frequent posters, special profile designs on the app, and has since been helping them host parties and in-person events around the country.

Alli Kimmel, 38, who joined Threads in 2025 and is a community champion of the K-pop community with more than 190,000 members, described the atmosphere of Threads as a “millennial Myspace Wild West.” It’s different from X and Bluesky, another social media app, and reminiscent of social media from yesteryear, she said.

“A lot of Threads users are in their 30s and 40s, and it’s more about silly, fun, random posts than a politicized space,” Ms. Kimmel said. He spends hours every day on the app posting about Stray Kids, his favorite K-pop band, including sharing photos of its members and holding discussions about new songs.

Threads sparked a similar sense of millennial nostalgia for Mr. Hayes, who compared the app to the early days of Facebook, which he started working for in 2011. As Instagram and Facebook focus more on AI-generated content, he says the appeal of Threads is human conversations.

Still, Threads is also working on integrating AI. In May, it began allowing some users to tag an AI account called Meta AI to ask it questions, similar to how X uses its Grok chatbot. Some content on Threads is also generated by AI, though less so than on Instagram and Facebook, the company said.

In January, Threads began serving ads, Meta’s first step toward monetizing the platform. The app has not released revenue numbers or data beyond the number of users it has.

“It could be the next Facebook, or it could be a huge bust,” said Ms. Otto of S&P Global Visible Alpha. “Until they start revealing the real engagement, we’ll never really know.”

If Threads reaches a billion users with a robust advertising business, it could generate at least $30 billion in annual revenue, she said. That would be significant for Meta, which made $201 billion last year, almost all of it from advertising.

The percentage of users who come to Threads independently, rather than through an Instagram or Facebook promotion, is increasing, Meta said, without disclosing numbers. Threads has become particularly popular in Asia, with the total time users spend on the app increasing by 80 percent in South Korea and 130 percent in Japan over the past year, the company said.

In contrast, other text-based social networks are struggling. In March, X reported that its advertising revenue fell by $100 million in the most recent quarter. Mastodon, another X rival, has 758,000 active userswhich is down 70 percent from its peak in the months after Mr. Musk bought Twitter. Bluesky said yes 45 million users this year.

The more Threads proves its success, the more attention it will get from Meta, even as the company focuses on businesses like AI and smart glasses, Mr. Hayes said.

“Investment will grow,” he said. “It should grow, given what we’re seeing.