A new report shows that when it comes to social media usage, an app from Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) is seeing strong daily user growth, while X from Elon Musk's xAI is falling behind.
Here's the latest in the battle for users on social media.
• Meta Platforms shares are showing limited movement. What’s ahead for META stock?
Threads Vs. X: New Winner Emerges For Mobile Use
Launched in July 2023 and quickly gaining 100 million sign-ups in five days, Threads from Meta has been called an X killer and an X copycat. Whatever you call Threads, the social media platform is showing strong growth and hitting new milestones.
Meta highlighted Threads passing the 400 million monthly active users in August 2025 and the 150 million daily active users milestone in October 2025.
While those milestones are impressive, another one was recently reached, according to data from Similarweb.
Threads is now more popular globally for daily use on mobile devices than X.
The data, which was shared by TechCrunch, said Threads now has 141.5 million daily active users for mobile users as of Jan. 7. X, on the other hand, has 125 million daily active users for mobile users.
While there has been pressure on X and its chatbot Grok for potential privacy concerns and content moderation, the report said the higher daily active users are likely more part of long-term trends and not the recent controversy.
A graph from Similarweb shows Threads having steady growth for daily active users, while X has witnessed steady declines over the past year.
Potentially helping the growth of Threads is Meta's cross-promotion from its other apps such as Facebook and Instagram and new features. The report said a focus on creators, new communities features, DM features and disappearing posts could be contributing to growth along with the test of games on Threads.
While Threads is more popular on iOS and Android devices, X still dominates on the web. As of Jan. 13, X had 145.4 million daily active users on the web, while Threads had around 8.5 million daily active users on the web.
While this is a huge gap and dominance, Threads is growing its daily web users as well. In June 2025, a report said X had around 145.8 million daily active users on the web, while Threads had 5.3 million daily active users.
The latest figures show that X could be losing daily active users online, while Threads has seen an increase over the past six months.
Could Threads Growth Help Meta's Q4 Earnings?
Meta is on deck to report fourth-quarter financial results on Wednesday, Jan. 28, after market close.
Analysts expect the company to report earnings per share of $8.23 and revenue of $58.28 billion, up from $8.02 and $48.38 billion, respectively, in last year's fourth quarter, according to Benzinga Pro data.
The company has beaten analyst estimates for earnings per share in 11 straight quarters and for revenue in 13 straight quarters.
Threads has been a bright spot for the company in terms of user growth and comes as advertising revenue has rebounded for the company's apps such as Facebook and Instagram.
While the latest Similarweb data is an estimate for Threads and X, Meta could highlight strong Threads growth and what comes next for monetization of the platform.
Meta Stock Price Action
Meta stock closed down 2.60% to $604.12 on Tuesday versus a 52-week trading range of $479.80 to $796.25. Meta shares are down around 2% over the last 52 weeks.
Photos: Shutterstock
