Meta-Owned Threads Overtakes X in Daily Mobile Usage

Threads now has more daily usage on mobile devices than Elon Musk’s X, TechCrunch reported Sunday (Jan. 18), citing data from Similarweb. 

Meta introduced Threads, a text-based app seen as its answer to Twitter/X, in 2023. Although X, formerly Twitter, still beats Threads among web-based users, the Threads mobile app has seen a continued increase in daily active users over the last several months, the report said.

The data shows that Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of Jan. 7, following months of growth, while X has 125 million daily active mobile users. By contrast, Threads has had little traction among web-based users, while X’s audience on that front is around 150 million user visits each day.

According to the report, this growth seems to be due to longer-term trends, rather than a response to recent controversies surrounding X. These include the discovery that some users were employing Grok, the platform’s AI system, to generate nonconsensual nude images of women, including minors. 

Concern around the deepfake images has led California’s attorney general to open an investigation into Grok, following similar investigations by other regions worldwide.

Meanwhile, Musk said earlier this month that X would open its new algorithm to the public, a change that includes all code for organic and advertising post recommendations.

In other Meta news, PYMNTS wrote last week about Meta Compute, the company’s new artificial intelligence (AI) initiative aimed at centralizing and supercharging its data center and AI infrastructure build-out. 

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta Compute will create tens of gigawatts of computing capacity this decade, with the goal of scaling to hundreds of gigawatts over time, energy levels comparable to the kind found in small countries.

As PYMNTS reported, the effort puts leadership for data center design, supply chain partnerships and strategic capacity planning under an organization co-led by company vets Santosh Janardhan and Daniel Gross, with guidance from freshly appointed President Dina Powell McCormick, a former adviser to the Trump White House.

“Meta’s push comes as the company seeks to catch up with AI heavyweights like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI,” the report added. “Last year’s Llama 4 model received a lukewarm market response, and Meta is now betting that owning larger swaths of compute, paired with reliable energy procurement, will yield strategic advantage.”