What Happened When 15 of Twitter’s Top Celebrities Joined Threads

Threads, the brand new social app from Meta, had a quick begin this month when it racked up 100 million downloads in lower than every week. With a lot momentum, the app appeared properly on its solution to dethroning Twitter.

But fast downloads don’t essentially translate to long-term success. Now the query is whether or not Threads has endurance.

So we launched into an experiment. We compiled an inventory of 15 of a number of the most-followed celebrities and high-profile figures on Twitter who joined Threads, together with Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Gates, Britney Spears, Shakira and Oprah Winfrey. Then we in contrast their exercise on Twitter with their exercise on Threads each day since July 5, when Threads was launched. We additionally checked out what they did on Instagram, which is owned by Meta and developed Threads.

The concept was to see which social platform saved the celebrities — who both declined to remark or didn’t reply to requests for remark — probably the most energetic. What we discovered is simply an early snapshot, however it might present some clues to the place Threads is headed.

Many celebrities initially embraced Threads.

Ms. DeGeneres, who joined Twitter in 2008, had not tweeted since late April. When Threads rolled out, she was among the many first 3,000 individuals to obtain the app.

“Welcome to Gay Twitter!” she posted on Threads on July 5. Her message shortly garnered over 7,000 replies.

Of the 15 celebrities we {followed}, Ms. DeGeneres was one in every of three who had stopped posting on Twitter in latest months and have become energetic on Threads. The different two have been Selena Gomez, who hadn’t tweeted since late May, and Ms. Winfrey, who hadn’t posted on Twitter since January. Ms. Gomez used Threads to say “hi” to her followers, whereas Ms. Winfrey mentioned she was on Threads to advertise a musical remake of the movie “The Color Purple,” which she produced.

Other celebrities, similar to Demi Lovato, started posting extra recurrently on Threads than on Twitter. In the primary week of Threads’ launch, Ms. Lovato posted six instances on Threads and shared two replies to one in every of her posts, however posted simply as soon as on Twitter to advertise the rock model of her hit track “Sorry Not Sorry.”

Ms. Lovato used Threads to interact together with her followers, asking them for music suggestions and thread puns, whilst her followers on the app have been a small fraction of what she had gathered on Twitter. As of Wednesday, she had two million followers on Threads and 53 million on Twitter.

Of the celebrities we {followed}, Wiz Khalifa was probably the most energetic on Threads by far, publishing unique posts and sharing different individuals’s messages and replies.

The rapper, whose actual identify is Cameron Jibril Thomaz, posted a median of 38 instances a day on Threads within the first two weeks of the app’s launch, whereas averaging 5 posts a day on Twitter.

His Threads posts usually blended textual content, images and movies with nuggets about his private life. “Proudly bringing the weed to threads,” he wrote in his first put up on July 5, accompanied by a brief video of him lighting a joint.

But the rapper’s exercise on Threads steadily declined. He replied to over 100 posts — principally to individuals who had responded to his personal posts — the primary week after Threads was launched. That quantity dropped within the second week, coupled with fewer unique posts and shares.

Starting on July 16, he ramped up on Twitter, typically posting greater than 10 instances a day. He remains to be extra energetic on Threads, however has begun publishing comparable content material on each platforms.

Some celebrities have began treating Threads and Twitter the identical.

Is there a distinction between Threads and Twitter? Not should you ask Jimmy Fallon, Shakira or the Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan.

Over the final three weeks, they have been among the many celebrities who revealed an identical or just about an identical posts on Twitter and Threads. That confirmed they will not be making a distinction between the platforms and are utilizing each as broadcast mechanisms.

On July 12, as an example, Mr. Fallon retweeted congratulations to “That’s My Jam,” a sport present he hosts, for an Emmy Award nomination. He revealed the identical message on Threads, although with out the hashtags he used on his Twitter put up. He has since not posted on Twitter or Threads.

From July 6 by way of July 13, Shakira posted a sequence of images to Threads, together with of a Fendi style present, an image of herself and the songwriter David Stewart, and images of herself in London — all of which she additionally placed on Twitter with the identical captions.

Mr. Khan shared posters of his upcoming film “Jawan” to Twitter, Threads and Instagram with the identical captions. But he appeared to have a slight desire for Twitter: On July 13, he used the “AskSRK” hashtag on the platform for followers to ask him questions in regards to the film.

Instagram wins!

Of the 15 celebrities we tracked who joined Threads, 4 — Ms. Perry, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner and Miley Cyrus — had not posted on the brand new app.

And like Mr. Khalifa, others appeared to lose a few of their preliminary enthusiasm for Threads. Shakira, after being energetic on Threads through the app’s first week, had not posted on it since July 13. Ms. DeGeneres, who posted six instances throughout her first week on Threads, had accomplished so solely as soon as up to now week.

Their falling engagement was commonplace. The common time that customers spent on Threads was 3.3 minutes a day as of Monday, down from 19 minutes as of July 6, in accordance with information from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence agency. In distinction, customers spent a median of 60 minutes a day on Instagram and 29.3 minutes on Twitter, in accordance with Sensor Tower.

A Meta spokeswoman declined to remark. On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, the corporate’s chief govt, mentioned in an earnings name that Threads had exceeded Meta’s expectations and that it was engaged on making quick enhancements to the app and bettering retention. He mentioned he didn’t count on to earn a living from Threads for a minimum of just a few years till the corporate acquired the consumer expertise proper.

Twitter, which its proprietor, Elon Musk, is renaming X, didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Instagram was the preferred with greater than half of the celebrities we {followed} over the previous three weeks, primarily based on the variety of days they have been energetic on every platform. (We excluded Instagram Stories that they posted from our tally since these could be ephemeral.)

Ms. Kardashian was on Instagram for 16 days throughout that interval, in contrast with none on Threads and three on Twitter. Her exercise in that point consisted of 19 Instagram posts and 16 tweets.

Ms. Spears was on Instagram for 14 days, in contrast with three on Threads and three on Twitter. She posted 35 instances on Instagram, versus fives instances every on Threads and Twitter.

But in an indication of the tempestuous relationship that individuals can have with social media, the singer briefly deactivated her Instagram account on Saturday — which additionally turned off her Threads account, since each are related — earlier than reactivating it.

Mike Isaac contributed reporting.