Before going any further, let’s be clear: Threads will not necessarily be a huge success. Sometimes platforms arrive with a bang only to fade into cultural irrelevance – remember Clubhouse? But again: Threads got 100 million users in five days, and that number could still grow. Rival upstarts simply have not gained that kind of traction. Mastodon claims to have around 2 million monthly active users. It’s hard to get exact numbers for the decentralized social media protocol Nostr, but an estimate based on Damus and Amethyst downloads is likely around 500,000 to 1 million, according to Damus. The invite-only Bluesky had some 50,000 users at the end of April, and since then got at least 58,000 new sign ups. These numbers aren’t bad, but these are the relatively successful rivals, not the ones you haven’t even heard about.
