With the departure of X CEO Linda Yaccarino, which was introduced Wednesday, the corporate that outlined text-first social networking faces renewed competitors.
12 months-over-year, the Elon Musk-owned social community has seen its every day energetic consumer base decline by roughly 10% as of the second quarter of 2025, in response to new knowledge supplied by app intelligence agency Sensor Tower. Whereas X’s consumer base remains to be 65% bigger than Meta’s Threads and 10 instances bigger than its next-biggest rival, Bluesky, X’s lasting victory on this area isn’t assured.
On cell gadgets, there’s already some indication that Threads is catching up.
New knowledge from market intelligence supplier Similarweb launched this week signifies Threads is nearing X’s every day app customers on cell. In June 2025, Threads’ cell app for iOS and Android noticed 115.1 million every day energetic customers, representing 127.8% year-over-year development; X reached 132 million every day actives, as its year-over-year development declined by 15.2%.
Picture Credit:Similarweb
General, X remains to be bigger than Threads due to its extra distinguished internet presence.
X additionally has different benefits, which may make for an fascinating struggle between the tech giants. On X, consumer engagement and loyalty stay robust, regardless of the elevated competitors from Meta in addition to open supply social networking actions like Bluesky and Mastodon, and different startups. Based on Sensor Tower’s knowledge, X customers spend a median of 31 minutes per day on the platform within the second quarter of 2025, which was practically quadruple that of Threads, at 8 minutes per day.
Plus, practically half (48%) of X’s world month-to-month app customers within the quarter interacted with the platform each day, in contrast with 33% for Threads, the agency stated.
However Threads can’t be counted out but, just because X is bigger. Although Threads might have fewer every day energetic customers than X, it’s been seeing stronger development.
Over the previous yr, Threads’ world app every day energetic customers had been up 160% year-over-year, the Sensor Tower’s knowledge reveals, pushed partially by the rollout of latest options and features, in addition to by its ties to Meta’s different apps, like Fb and Instagram, which function funnels.
Threads can also be laser-focused on rising its advertisements ecosystem, which is the app’s solely technique of monetization in the interim. In April, Meta opened up Threads advertisements to its world advertisers, and the next month introduced assessments for video advertisements, as properly.
The app has the benefit of being part of Meta’s bigger advertisements enterprise, the place its instruments are already acquainted to entrepreneurs and the place it has the power to faucet into Meta’s practically twenty years of expertise in maximizing advert revenues.
Underneath Yaccarino, X’s advert ecosystem recovered, nevertheless it’s been a unstable experience.
Advertisers within the media and leisure, buying, and gaming verticals via 2025 year-to-date
characterize 25%, 22%, and seven% of whole U.S. advert spend on X, respectively. Every of these classes have grown since 2022 when advertisers within the media and leisure, buying, and gaming verticals represented 20%, 14%, and a pair of%, respectively, Sensor Tower says.
Final yr, prime advertisers by U.S. advert spend had been Samsung, Temu, State Farm, MGM, the NFL, Robinhood, Flutter, the NBA, Mihoyo, and Microsoft. This yr, Apple, Google, Verizon, and Dell joined the lineup of prime manufacturers promoting on X.
New knowledge from advert intelligence supplier Guideline additionally famous that U.S. advert spending was up 62% year-over-year within the first half of 2025.
Promoting isn’t a zero-sum recreation, however the duopoly of Meta and Google has been exhausting to topple.
For Meta, the problem was not whether or not it may flip a revenue from a brand new social networking app, however whether or not it had the power to create a brand new app that might acquire traction with customers. For years, it didn’t appear like that might be the case. The corporate’s solely profitable new apps had been these it acquired, like Instagram and WhatsApp.
In the meantime, Meta’s prior makes an attempt at constructing a brand new social networking app have nearly completely failed, resulting in the shutdown of experimental apps like Tuned, Tremendous, Transfer, Gaming, Hey, Neighborhood, Bulletin, Lasso, Moments, IGTV, Hobbi, Lifestage, Slingshot, Rooms, Rift, Notify, Paper, and others, together with acquisitions like tbh.
That modified with Threads, which leveraged Instagram’s consumer base to bootstrap development and now makes use of Fb and Instagram’s apps to drive clicks.
Right this moment, Threads has 350 million month-to-month energetic customers, per Meta’s newest earnings report. X, a personal firm, is not required to share metrics publicly, however Musk has claimed beforehand that X has 600 million month-to-month energetic customers.
