The billionaire battle between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk for social media supremacy continues to heat up and Meta Platforms META could have another fast-growing platform with Threads, based on the company’s third-quarter earnings report.
What Happened: Meta Platforms reported third-quarter revenue and earnings per share that beat analyst expectations, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
The company reported 3.29 billion family daily active people in the quarter, up 5% year-over-year.
On the company’s earnings call, Zuckerberg said the company’s Threads social media platform has almost 275 million monthly active users.
“It’s been growing, more than a million sign-ups per day,” Zuckerberg said on the call. “Engagement is growing too, so we continue to be on track towards this becoming our next major social app.”
Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said the company is seeing engagement on Threads grow and there are plans to introduce more features for the social platform.
“Threads remains another area where we see exciting potential,” Li said.
Li added that the company feels good about the user growth on Threads, highlighting the U.S., Taiwan and Japan as three markets seeing strong growth.
“We’re very focused on continuing to build out the sort of functionality of Threads over time and being responsive to what users tell us that they’re interest in.”
While Threads growth is impressive, Li cautioned that the platforms isn’t expected to be a “meaningful driver of 2025 revenue.”
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Why It’s Important: Meta had 100 million signups in its first five days of launch in July 2023. The platform was viewed as a potential threat to X, formerly known as Twitter, with some of the same features.
Musk, who paid $44 billion to acquire the platform and rename the company, brushed off the competition and accused Zuckerberg of attempting to copy the existing social media platform.
The war of words almost led to a cage fight between the billionaires. While the two have not gotten in the cage to fight, Musk remains critical of Threads and said the company is boring its users.
In July, the Financial Times reported X had 251 million daily active users. At the same time, Threads had 175 million monthly active users. This means Threads has gained around 100 million monthly users for Threads in the last three months.
While monthly users are not the same as daily active users, the latest metrics suggest that more people are signing up for Threads and at least testing the platform as a potential X alternate or using the platform regularly.
Strong growth at Meta Platforms in 2024 has seen shares soar, and the company rejoined the $1 trillion market cap club, ranking as the more valuable company to Musk’s Tesla in the billionaire battle. Meta is worth $1.5 trillion and Tesla is worth $827 billion at the time of writing, ranking seventh and tenth among publicly traded companies.
Musk is winning another battle with his $268 billion wealth, making him the world’s richest person, as reported by Bloomberg. Zuckerberg ranks third at $209 billion. Zuckerberg’s $81.2 billion wealth gain in 2024 thanks to META stock has outpaced the $39.1 billion gain of Musk.
META Price Action: Meta stock is down 3.3% to $571.96 on Thursday, versus a 52-week trading range of $301.85 to $602.95. Meta stock is up 66% year-to-date in 2024.
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Image created using artificial intelligence via Midjourney.
Elon Musk isn’t holding back his thoughts on Threads, calling it “boring” – but with a staggering 275 million active users each month, Zuckerberg’s latest social media experiment might just be stirring up more excitement than he lets on. Could Threads become the platform that finally challenges X? The numbers are hard to ignore, and with new features continually rolling out, it seems more users are drawn in each day. Is Musk’s reaction dismissive, or is he sensing real competition on the horizon? Dive in to find out what’s behind the hype and whether Threads has the potential to dethrone X.
