Meta’s Threads has surpassed 500 million monthly users, the company said Tuesday, almost exactly three years after it launched to chase Elon Musk’s X.
That’s 100 million more than last August, and puts Mark Zuckerberg halfway to the goal of one billion users he set on day one.
In addition to this milestone, Threads includes a feature that its rival does not have. ‘Your Something’ lets you privately tell the app to show you more or less a topic, for one, three or seven days.
It builds on February’s ‘Dear Something’, which did the same but only through a public post. Your Algo is keeping the application for you and will roll out first in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, in line with Threads’ tiered regional approach, which saw it. reach the EU months after its debut in the United States.
Leaning into communities and live chat
Meta is also bringing Threads ‘Communities’ out of beta, themed spaces for topics like basketball, K-pop, and books, with a discovery center to help people find them and badges for top contributors. The company credits communities for “everything” in its recent growth in daily users, the same bet its rivals are making: Bluesky has built its own strategy around group chats and communities..
Its Live Chats feature, real-time threads linked to events like the World Cup, will reach all communities in July. Threads boss Connor Hayes framed it as a “second screen” that fits the app’s quieter feel “in a world where much of social media is video-focused and loud.”
Taken together, the measures point to the only thing that X still does best: punctuality. The threads were launched without search, hashtags, or chronological feed, and he’s spent two years adding them, until desktop direct messages. Algorithmic controls and live chats are your bid to finally outperform X in real-time conversations, while maintaining a calmer tone.
The numbers that Meta does not share
The figure of 500 million are monthly users, the flattering metric. Meta won’t give a current daily active number, which shows real commitment, and the last one it revealed was 150 million, back in October.
It says daily users are “growing strongly,” and that the growth is now more organic, with more people opening Threads directly rather than accessing it from Instagram. He also points to Asia, where time spent increases 80 percent in South Korea and 130 percent in Japan year over year, and notes that BTS just joined in, gaining 4.2 million followers in days.
Context matters: Third-party trackers had recently estimated that Threads’ base was shrinking, so Meta’s growth claim is partly a rebuttal. And the app still doesn’t generate significant revenue. It added ads in 200 countries this year, but Meta’s chief financial officer said in April that Threads will not be a “significant driver” of revenue in 2026.
There is also a limit to the new control. Your Algo requests deliberately expire after a week, so Meta has the final say over your feed. You can push the algorithm, but you can’t take the wheel, unlike in Bluesky, which has leaned towards giving users full control of theirs..
