Elon Musk announced on Monday that X, formerly known as Twitter, is going to charge a monthly fee for all users of the micro blogging platform.
What Happened: Musk noted the move is intended to deter the massive influx of bots on the platform, saying in a livestream discussion with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that bot accounts only have access to "so many" payment options, and charging a small monthly fee to all users should weed out any bot activity.
The Tesla CEO didn't go into specifics regarding the potential fee and its rollout timeline.
If implemented, the subscription fee could become one of Musk's most contentious decisions and may lead users to explore free alternatives, potentially benefiting Meta Platforms Inc's
Launched in July, Threads quickly grew to over 100 million users. However, data from SimilarWeb last month indicated that daily active users have plummeted to below 10 million.
If X introduces monthly charges, a shift towards Threads might be on the horizon. Should Threads near a billion users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hinted at potential monetization strategies.
Further insights from SimilarWeb highlight that even in the U.S., where initial engagement with Threads was high, user interaction declined by 85% since its launch. The app saw its daily active users peak at 49.3 million worldwide on July 7, only to fall to 10.3 million by Aug. 7.
The average duration users spent on Threads also saw a drop from nearly 21 minutes to 3 minutes within a month.
In contrast, X maintains a steady user base, with over 100 million daily active Android users alone who spend roughly 25 minutes on the platform daily, according to SimilarWeb.
Threads' rise in popularity was partially fueled by Twitter controversies and user dissatisfaction with post rate limits, leading some to seek alternatives. However, the Meta-owned platform has yet to establish a unique value proposition that retains users long-term.
More to that, Threads has not been spared from its share of challenges with bots, either.
Adam Mosseri, Instagram's head, said back in July that Threads was introducing rate limits as spam attacks were picking up - the same thing that X did which drove some users to the platform over the summer.
