Although downloads of an app are not the best measurement of usage, they will give a broad indication about the direction in which the market is headed. But if the alt-Twitter wars are anything to go by, then the app that is leading this particular game is Meta's Threads, or Instagram's take on Twitter. Meta's take on Twitter now rakes up triple the daily downloads on iOS globally compared to X (formerly Twitter), whereas it sees more than double the number—and sometimes even more than triple—on Google Play.

That's not always the case, however. Threads, for example, had a significant surge in new installs once it opened up to the public this past summer but downloads would regularly rise and fall thereafter as Meta sought a variety of methods to get more traffic onto its newly-minted app, including featuring trending threads on other apps, such as Facebook and Instagram. But as boosts from those early efforts wore off, downloads of Threads would slide back, catching up to X installs, particularly on iOS, according to Appfigures data.

But that has all changed in the last quarter of last year.

As of late December, Threads was already attracting over half a million installations every day on Google Play and iOS. The latter has since tailed down slightly during January but across the two platforms, now threads is downloading more each day than X, and by looking at this graph appears to be expanding that lead.

For example, on February 25, 2024, Threads had 486,803 installs on Google Play and 342,228 on iOS. The downloads on Google Play according to Appfigures were on X as 225,408 while those on iOS reached 112,625 downloads. This is nearly thrice the iOS downloads for threads and more than double on Google Play.

Just a week ago, February 22, the gap was even larger. Then, Threads boasted 382,999 daily installations on iOS versus just 113,649 installations of X on the same platform-or over three times as many. By now, the Google Play downloads for Threads stood at 660,882 against just 210,475 for X on the Play Storealso over three times as many.

Though daily install rates for Threads continue to wax and wane, they are now regularly above those of X. That pattern over time may eventually materialize in monthly active users as well. If so, then Threads would overtake Twitter as the go-to microblogging service for the majority of users, though the latter has enjoyed first-mover advantage in that space. What's more, it would mean that Meta has more control over the information-sharing and news ecosystem used by journalists, researchers, academics, news junkies, and others — and Meta has said it won't amplify news on Threads and won't recommend political content.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Threads had 130 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of the company's fourth quarter. Those numbers have surely inched higher in the weeks since. Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the Threads app is doing "remarkably well" in Japan, for instance—a market where Twitter had strong traction.

While X boasts 500 million monthly active users as of last fall, it is unclear how many of those are automated accounts or spam. As TechCrunch reported last month, X might have a problem of Verified bots, as hundreds of dozens of paid accounts blue-checked accidentally exposed the source with some iteration of "I'm sorry, I cannot provide the feedback as it goes against OpenAI's content policy" — one of those canned responses of AI. Searching for that very query, here on X, will reveal a related ongoing problem.

Although this is not impossible for Threads, more people are apparently posting this phrase organically on Meta's platform as a joke to their followers.

One of the issues with new installs is its rebranding from Twitter. While December and January month-over-month downloads have edged up modestly, they are far lower than beforehand rebranding, Appfigures says. Revenue for Threads also is a bit better in January than the prior month; however, the company expects a drop in February.

As for the decentralized X alternatives, like Mastodon's official mobile app and the newly public Bluesky, they barely register in the face of this competition, appearing as largely flat lines on the download chart. To be fair, Mastodon has a wide third-party app ecosystem, but in total, its network is hovering around 1 million monthly active users at this time, per its own first-party data.

Bluesky also had a small pop when it opened to the public earlier this month, but the steam has since run out of steam. On its biggest day — February 7, the day after its launch — it saw 79,685 installs on iOS and 55,711 on Google Play — nowhere near Threads' or X's numbers. Still, it's very early days for this social network, which also only recently opened up federation-where anyone can run their own Bluesky server. So perhaps it will pick up as a decentralized Twitter/X alternative in time.