By
Temitope Olatunji
May 6th, 2024
To continue serving its sign-ups and entice users to return to Threads, Meta wants to add more “retention-driving hooks”.
Following its buzzy launch and recording over 100 million users within a week of rolling out Threads, the executives of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) are now working on boosting retention on the new app. The management of the multinational technology company is heavily focusing on keeping Threads user base after it lost over 50% of its users. The matter was revealed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who on Thursday said at an internal company town hall that the retention of users on the new Twitter rival was better than executives’ expectations. However, the Meta Platforms’ CEO noted that user retention on Threads is “not perfect”.
Meta Plans Retention Hooks for Threads Users
In his speech, he explained that it is still “awesome” if all 100 million sign-ups or even half remain on the app. “We’re not there yet,” he added. Zuckerberg sees departing users as a “normal” occurrence, with the hope to accommodate and house more users as time goes on. The CEO expects user retention on Threads to improve as Meta adds more exciting features to the app. Some of the expected additions include a desktop version and search functionality.
Meanwhile, these features are available on Twitter, which Threads appears to be in competition with. Since Twitter, now X, was launched in 2006, the social media networking service has onboarded hundreds of millions of users. The social media app still boasts millions of monthly active users despite the recent changes that caused the departure of many. As much as social media users seek alternatives to Twitter amid Elon Musk’s restructuring, Threads still has quite some upgrades to do to meet up with the X app.
To continue serving its sign-ups and entice users to return to Threads, Meta wants to add more “retention-driving hooks”. According to chief product officer Chris Cox, the technology firm wants to ensure that users of the Instagram apps can also see important Threads. The efforts of Meta on sustaining Threads users came shortly after Meta posted a bullish revenue growth forecast. The company sees strong engagement across its app, adding that costs will rise in 2023 and 2024.
Meta’s Metaverse Push
Speaking further at the internal company town hall, Zuckerberg also talked to employees about the metaverse push. He said Meta’s efforts on augmented and virtual reality technology that would power the metaverse were not “massively ahead of schedule, but on track”.
Eric Wittman of VSCO, a social media app that gained brief momentum in 2019, has issued some advice to Meta on its Threads app. Wittman said Meta could make the new app the “purest form” of social media by running the business as a loss leader. Directing his suggestion to Zuckerberg, he asked that the Twitter-like could simply be generating “goodwill” instead of revenue.