Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has stated that his newly released social media program, Threads, is attracting more return users than he had anticipated.
More than one hundred million people signed up for the app in the first few days after its release earlier this month, posing a challenge to Elon Musk's competing platform, which was once known as Twitter. However, analysts were skeptical about whether or not Threads would be able to maintain users' interest.
Since the debut of the platform, third-party data companies have observed a decrease in both the number of users that sign up for it and the amount of time they spend using it. Mr. Zuckerberg stated that the initial success had taken executives by surprise, and that "we're seeing more people coming back daily than I had expected."
He stated that increasing that level of participation was the primary objective of the organization at this time and that success was not a "foregone conclusion." He also mentioned that they have a lot of work to do before Threads can reach its full potential and Threads does have tremendous potential.
His comments come at the same time as Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, claimed a jump in advertising sales and healthy user growth, with 3.07 billion individuals globally engaged on one of its apps each and every day.
The growth suggests that Meta is climbing out of the rut it entered into the previous year, which saw a decline in advertising sales due to greater competition, privacy measures implemented by Apple, and overall economic downturn.
According to Meta, it made $32 billion in advertising sales during the period of April to June, which is an increase of 11% compared to the same time period in the previous year.
That was far better than the predictions made by industry analysts, with growth picking up speed from the previous quarter.
After-hours trading saw a rise in the company's stock as a result of the results. As a result of investors buying into Mr. Zuckerberg's campaign to cut costs and refocus the internet behemoth, the price per share has already more than quadrupled since the beginning of the year.
At the end of June, Meta reported having approximately 71,469 employees, which is a 14% decrease from the previous year. The company stated that the figure only reflected the impact of almost half of the thousands of layoffs it had disclosed in the most recent few months.
According to the lead analyst of Insider Intelligence, Debra Aho Williamson, there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Meta at the moment.
She stated that the company still faced challenges in the form of a sluggish advertising market as well as fierce competition in the advertising and artificial intelligence industries. It has also not yet seen a return on its investments in virtual reality.
"These factors will weigh on Meta in the second half of the year, but thanks to its momentum, the company will be in a better position to face these obstacles," she said.
