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Remember when Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were the big three?
Posted by on January 19, 2026 at 10:08 pmNot that long ago, social media felt pretty settled: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. That was it. That was the lineup (Not saying there were no other socials, but those were the ones that everyone and their mom had).
Fast forward a few years and… Twitter (now X) has been through a lot: leadership changes, acquisitions, rebrands, Grok, constant experiments, you name it. The vibes have been… chaotic.
Meanwhile, Meta quietly did what Meta does best: copied the format, waited for the timing to be right, and launched Threads.
When Threads dropped, most of the internet said the same two things:
- “This is just Meta’s version of Twitter.”
- “There’s no way this lasts.”
Turns out… it lasted.
Threads has now passed X in daily active users. Which is kind of wild, given how dominant Twitter once felt.
Was it because Meta backed it?
Was it the timing with people leaving X?Probably a mix of both.
But the bigger takeaway for us: being first, or being one of the big ones, doesn’t lock you into success forever. Platforms shift. Audiences move. Attention is fragile.
Do you guys think this cycle will last? Is something else going to show up and flip the table again? Will Twitter/X recover?
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1 Reply
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In case anyone is wondering, the daily user data came from a report by the market intelligence firm [Similarweb](https://www.similarweb.com/) and a artile from Techcrunch which we will link below:
[https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/18/threads-edges-out-x-in-daily-mobile-users-new-data-shows/](https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/18/threads-edges-out-x-in-daily-mobile-users-new-data-shows/)
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