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 every day lively person base decline by roughly 10% as of the second quarter of 2025, based on new information offered by app intelligence agency Sensor Tower. Whereas X’s person base continues to be 65% bigger than Meta’s Threads and 10 occasions bigger than its next-biggest rival, Bluesky, X’s lasting victory on this house just isn’t assured.
On cellular units, there’s already some indication that Threads is catching up.
New information from market intelligence supplier Similarweb launched this week signifies Threads is nearing X’s every day app customers on cellular. In June 2025, Threads’ cellular app for iOS and Android noticed 115.1 million every day lively 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%.
General, X continues to be bigger than Threads because of its extra distinguished internet presence.
X additionally has different benefits, which might make for an fascinating struggle 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 accordance with Sensor Tower’s information, X customers spent 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 might have fewer every day lively customers than X, it’s been seeing stronger development.
Over the previous 12 months, Threads’ world app every day lively customers have been up 160% year-over-year, the Sensor Tower’s information exhibits, pushed partly by the rollout of latest 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 adverts ecosystem, which is the app’s solely technique of monetization in the intervening time. In April, Meta opened up Threads adverts to its world advertisers, and the next month introduced exams for video adverts, as properly.
The app has the benefit of being part of Meta’s bigger adverts enterprise, the place its instruments are already acquainted to entrepreneurs and the place it has the power to faucet into Meta’s almost twenty years of expertise in maximizing advert revenues.
Below Yaccarino, X’s advert ecosystem recovered, however it’s been a risky experience.
Advertisers within the media and leisure, procuring, and gaming verticals via 2025 year-to-date
symbolize 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, procuring, and gaming verticals represented 20%, 14%, and a pair of%, respectively, Sensor Tower says.
Final 12 months, high advertisers by U.S. advert spend have been Samsung, Temu, State Farm, MGM, the NFL, Robinhood, Flutter, the NBA, Mihoyo, and Microsoft. This 12 months, Apple, Google, Verizon, and Dell joined the lineup of high manufacturers promoting on X.
New information 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 just isn’t a zero-sum sport, however the duopoly of Meta and Google has been laborious to topple.
For Meta, the problem was not whether or not it might 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 shoppers. For years, it didn’t appear 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 virtually fully failed, resulting in the shutdown of experimental apps like Tuned, Tremendous, Transfer, Gaming, Good day, 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.
At the moment, Threads has 350 million month-to-month lively customers, per Meta’s newest earnings report. X, a personal firm, is now not required to share metrics publicly, however Musk has claimed beforehand that X has 600 million month-to-month lively customers.
