What happened when 15 of Twitter’s most famous people joined Threads?

DeGeneres has not tweeted since late April, despite having joined Twitter in 2008. She was one of the first 3,000 individuals to download Threads when it originally became available.

Threads, Meta’s new social app, got off to a rapid start this month, with 100 million downloads in less than a week. With so much traction, the app appeared to be on its way to dethroning Twitter.

However, quick downloads may not always imply long-term success. The issue now is whether Threads will last.

So we decided to try something new. We prepared a list of 15 of Twitter’s most popular celebrities and public personalities who have joined Threads, including Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Gates, Britney Spears, Shakira, and Oprah Winfrey. Then, every day since July 5, when Threads was introduced, we compared their activity on Twitter with their activity on Threads. We also looked at what they did on Instagram, which is owned by Meta, and where Threads was created.

The goal was to determine which social site kept celebrities who either declined to remark or did not reply to comment requests the most active. What we discovered is only a preliminary snapshot, but it may give some hints as to where Threads is heading.

Threads were first popular with celebs

DeGeneres has not tweeted since late April, despite having joined Twitter in 2008. She was one of the first 3,000 individuals to download Threads when it originally became available.

On July 5, she said on Threads, “Welcome to Gay Twitter!” Her message rapidly drew nearly 7,000 responses.

DeGeneres was one of three celebrities we followed who had ceased commenting on Twitter in recent months and became active on Threads. Selena Gomez, who hadn’t tweeted since late May, and Oprah Winfrey, who hadn’t tweeted since January, were the other two. Gomez used Threads to say “hi” to her fans, while Winfrey claimed she came on the show to promote a musical adaptation of “The Colour Purple,” which she produced.

Other celebrities, like as Demi Lovato, began posting on Threads more frequently than on Twitter. Lovato posted six times on Threads in the first week of its release and shared two answers to one of her postings, but just once on Twitter to promote the rock version of her smash song “Sorry Not Sorry.”

Lovato utilized Threads to interact with her fans, asking for song recommendations and thread jokes despite the fact that her following on the app was a quarter of what she had on Twitter. As of Wednesday, she has 2 million Threads followers and 53 million Twitter followers.

Before slowing down, Wiz Khalifa was the most active on Threads.

Wiz Khalifa was by far the most active on Threads of the celebs we followed, writing original posts and sharing other people’s comments and answers.

In the first two weeks of Threads’ release, the rapper, whose actual name is Cameron Jibril Thomaz, posted an average of 38 times each day, while tweeting five times per day.

His Threads articles often included text, images, and videos, as well as morsels about his personal life. “Proudly bringing the weed to threads,” he said on his first post, which was accompanied by a brief video of him lighting a joint, on July 5.

However, the rapper’s involvement in Threads progressively dwindled. He answered nearly 100 postings in the first week of Threads’ existence, largely to those who had responded to his own messages. This figure fell in the second week, owing to fewer original articles and shares.

Beginning on July 16, he increased his Twitter activity, often posting more than ten times a day. He is still more active on Threads, but he has started releasing information on both sites that is comparable.

Some celebs have begun to handle Threads and Twitter similarly.

Is there a distinction to be made between Threads and Twitter? Not according to Jimmy Fallon, Shakira, or Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan.

They were among the celebs that wrote similar or almost identical messages on Twitter and Threads over the previous three weeks. This demonstrated that they may not be distinguishing between the platforms and are using both as broadcast techniques.

On July 12, for example, Fallon congratulated “That’s My Jam,” a game show he presents, on its Emmy nomination. He posted the identical statement on Threads, but without the hashtags he used on Twitter. He has not written on Twitter or Threads lately.

From July 6 to July 13, Shakira posted a series of images on Threads, including a Fendi fashion show, a portrait of herself with singer David Stewart, and shots of herself in London, all of which she also shared on Twitter with the same captions.

Khan published posters for his forthcoming film “Jawan” with identical wording on Twitter, Threads, and Instagram. But he looked to prefer Twitter: On July 13, he utilized the “AskSRK” hashtag on the platform to allow fans to ask him questions about the film.

Instagram is the winner!

Four of the 15 celebs we monitored that joined Threads had not posted on the new app: Perry, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, and Miley Cyrus.

Others, like Khalifa, seemed to lose some of their original excitement for Threads. Shakira has not posted on Threads since July 13, despite being active throughout the app’s debut week. DeGeneres had only posted once in the previous week, after posting six times in her debut week on Threads.

Their failed engagement was not uncommon. According to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence business, users spent an average of 3.3 minutes per day on Threads as of Monday, down from 19 minutes as of July 6. According to Sensor Tower, users spend an average of 60 minutes per day on Instagram and 29.3 minutes on Twitter.

A Meta representative declined to comment. In an earnings call on Wednesday, the firm’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that Threads had surpassed Meta’s expectations and that the business was focusing on making rapid enhancements to the app and enhancing retention. He stated that he does not anticipate making money from Threads for at least a few years until the firm has mastered the user experience.

Twitter, which Elon Musk is rebranding as X, did not reply to a request for comment.

Based on the number of days they were active on each platform, Instagram had more than half of the celebrities we followed during the last three weeks. (We eliminated Instagram Stories from our tally since they might be transitory.)

During that time, Kardashian spent 16 days on Instagram, none on Threads, and three on Twitter. During that period, she made 19 Instagram posts and 16 tweets.

Spears spent 14 days on Instagram, compared to three on Threads and three on Twitter. She posted 35 times on Instagram, compared to five times on Threads and five times on Twitter.

But, in a demonstration of how people’s relationships with social media can be volatile, the singer momentarily canceled her Instagram account on Saturday – which also switched off her Threads account, as the two are linked – before reactivating it.