With the departure of X CEO Linda Yaccarino, which was introduced Wednesday, the corporate that outlined text-first social networking faces renewed competitors.
Yr-over-year, the Elon Musk-owned social community has seen its day by day energetic person base decline by roughly 10% as of the second quarter of 2025, in keeping with new knowledge supplied by app intelligence agency Sensor Tower. Whereas X’s person base remains to be 65% bigger than Meta’s Threads and 10 occasions bigger than its next-biggest rival, Bluesky, X’s lasting victory on this area shouldn’t be assured.
On cell units, 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 day by day app customers on cell. In June 2025, Threads’ cell app for iOS and Android noticed 115.1 million day by day energetic customers, representing 127.8% year-over-year development; X reached 132 million day by day actives, as its year-over-year development declined by 15.2%.
General, X remains to be bigger than Threads because of its extra outstanding net presence.
X additionally has different benefits, which may make for an attention-grabbing combat between the tech giants. On X, person engagement and loyalty stay sturdy, regardless of the elevated competitors from Meta in addition to open supply social networking actions like Bluesky and Mastodon, and different startups. In line with 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 almost quadruple that of Threads, at 8 minutes per day.
Plus, almost 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 could have fewer day by day energetic customers than X, it’s been seeing stronger development.
Over the previous yr, Threads’ world app day by day energetic customers have been up 160% year-over-year, the Sensor Tower’s knowledge reveals, pushed partly by the rollout of recent options and capabilities, 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 intervening time. In April, Meta opened up Threads advertisements to its world advertisers, and the next month introduced assessments for video advertisements, as nicely.
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 flexibility to faucet into Meta’s almost 20 years of expertise in maximizing advert revenues.
Underneath Yaccarino, X’s advert ecosystem recovered, however it’s been a risky journey.
Advertisers within the media and leisure, purchasing, and gaming verticals by 2025 year-to-date
characterize 25%, 22%, and seven% of complete U.S. advert spend on X, respectively. Every of these classes have grown since 2022 when advertisers within the media and leisure, purchasing, and gaming verticals represented 20%, 14%, and a pair of%, respectively, Sensor Tower says.
Final yr, high advertisers by U.S. advert spend have 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 high 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 shouldn’t be a zero-sum sport, however the duopoly of Meta and Google has been arduous 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 flexibility to create a brand new app that might acquire traction with shoppers. For years, it didn’t seem like that might be the case. The corporate’s solely profitable new apps have 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 solely failed, resulting in the shutdown of experimental apps like Tuned, Tremendous, Transfer, Gaming, Howdy, 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 person base to bootstrap development and now makes use of Fb and Instagram’s apps to drive clicks.
As we speak, Threads has 350 million month-to-month energetic customers, per Meta’s newest earnings report. X, a non-public firm, is not required to share metrics publicly, however Musk has claimed beforehand that X has 600 million month-to-month energetic customers.