A Look At Key Trends On Threads As It Turns One & Hits 175 Million Users
Threads
As Threads approaches its one-year anniversary (July 5th) and now has over 175 million users, Instagram collaborated with Wakefield Research to delve into how users engage with the text-based app and social media overall. The survey encompassed nearly 2,000 respondents across the U.S., spanning Gen Z, Millennials, and Boomers, revealing insightful trends.
Here’s an overview of some of the key trends:
Community and Connectivity: Over 60% of respondents emphasize that connecting with others is paramount on social media. Threads stands out for fostering communities and conversations, particularly through Topic Tags—essentially hashtags that enhance content discoverability. Since inception, users have generated over 50 million tags, with popular ones like Photography Threads, BookThreads, GymThreads, and ArtThreads.
Entertainment and Information Consumption: 67% of Gen Z users use social feeds primarily for entertainment news. Additionally, music (60%), food (59%), and fashion (42%) news are also sought after. Threads facilitates discovery through features like Topic Tags, Trending Topics, and personalized feeds.
Content Formats and Preferences: Despite the focus on visual content, 63% of all Threads posts remain text-based. While most Americans (73%) prefer proper sentence case, Gen Z exhibits a more relaxed approach, with 36% favoring lowercase and 25% deeming punctuation unnecessary. Photos are increasingly popular, though appearing in 25% of Threads posts. Communities like Photography Threads often incorporate images into their posts on Threads.
Emerging Features and User Engagement: Voice Notes, introduced last fall, have gained traction, especially among younger demographics like Gen Z (65%) and Millennials (63%). However, awareness among Gen X and Boomers remains low, with over 50% and 70%, respectively, unfamiliar with this feature. Celebrities such as Cardi B and Serena Williams have utilized Voice Notes for interactive sessions on Threads.
Influence and Content Creation: Nearly half of Gen Z and over half of Millennials surveyed identify as content creators or influencers, with 10% pursuing this path full-time. Threads serves as a pivotal platform for emerging creators to build their presence and engage with audiences.
Why It Matters: Since its launch, Threads has seen steady improvement, carving out its own space in text-based apps and social media as a whole.
Threads offers users multiple avenues to express themselves—from text and photos to voice notes—facilitating connections within various communities. Like many social media platforms, its success hinges on the impact it can have on creators in sharing content, growing their audience, and monetizing. There’s room for improvement on this front, such as enhanced analytics and features like native direct messaging, but its growth to 175 million users shows that it's on the right path.
For creators and marketers who want to understand the current landscape of Threads, including how to either jump on the platform for the first time or strengthen their current presence, this research can help inform them, along with experimenting and testing
