This month, Threads revealed that it has achieved 400 million monthly active users — almost as many as X (previously Twitter). That’s close to half a billion individuals.

Threads resembles the Big Bang Theory of social media. Unexciting, tedious, mostly inoffensive, yet it managed to be the most viewed show on television for years. Game of Thrones garnered the cultural and critical spotlight, but Old Sheldon maintained a consistent audience that was nearly the same size. At any moment, searches for “Twitter” and “X” occur anywhere from 12 to 30 times more than searches for “Threads” on Google, based on the search engine’s Trends data. Threads is a favored platform lacking a distinct identity. And perhaps that’s advantageous: X’s cultural significance is inevitably linked to the constant waves of Elon Musk controversy — much like how Game of Thrones’ cultural impact is permanently associated with its disastrously poor final season.

Conversely, Big Bang Theory provided reliability: viewers’ anticipations were fulfilled each week, even if those expectations didn’t reach the peaks of what a television show can, or ought to, be. Similarly, Threads is reliably good at one aspect users truly desire from a social media platform: seeing and engaging with their posts. Threads may seem unexciting when compared to its rivals, but its users mention it could be the only spot on the internet at this moment where they don’t feel like they are shouting into nothingness.

And in spite of Threads’ ties to Meta’s array of social media platforms, it remains a relatively recent app — and after conversing with several Threads power users, I am convinced that its novelty and gradual addition of features contribute to its success. This stands in stark contrast to X, which is perpetually evolving and appears to be losing users.

It’s more than just “not X”

Meecham Whitson Meriweather, a 38-year-old writer in Brooklyn, opted to join Threads when it debuted in 2023. He shared posts on both X and Threads for some time until, in February of this year, he was completely banned from X. He isn’t completely certain why he was suspended from the social media platform — he was an active user with 58,000 followers at the time — but suspects it was related to a post he made about X’s owner Musk needing to be “locked up.”

He isn’t the only one who departed X — by choice or otherwise — after Elon Musk took control of the site in 2022. Like other users who abandoned the platform, he explored alternatives such as Mastodon and experimented with Bluesky but found his home in Threads, largely due to Meta’s interconnected system.

“It also simply felt more genuine as a text-focused app because they already had everything they required,” Whitson Meriweather stated to Mashable. “That was the primary attraction for me. I’m already coming across people I know here. I can already discuss what I want to discuss. There’s no strange equilibrium in the feed.”

Not only are all your Threads followers linked to your Instagram or Facebook accounts, but Threads also incorporates ActivityPub, a decentralized protocol also powering Mastodon, which enhances the platform’s federated, open social networking.

He has since initiated an on-platform interview series he calls “Loose Threads,” where he interviews various individuals — including Martha Stewart and Pam Anderson — on the app.

Reach without followers

Whitson Meriweather, who authors a Substack newsletter and has published pieces in Vulture, GQ, and New York Magazine, has 41,500 followers on Threads. However, one reason users seem to value Threads is that, similar to TikTok, you don’t actually need to have thousands of followers to gain decent engagement on the app.

One user, commenting on a Reddit forum questioning who actually utilizes the app, stated they “find it worthwhile” because “you can just say stuff on there under a tag and people will find it and respond.”

“Engagement on [Threads] is really good, and it doesn’t feel like yelling into a void,” the user expressed.

“Yelling into a void” is frequently a grievance for social media users without substantial followings. David “YoRush” Rushing, a 37-year-old from Charlotte, North Carolina, didn’t maintain much of a social media presence before coming to Threads. He was on X but perceived it to be “toxic,” and none of his posts really made an impression. When Meta launched Threads, he was among the first users — and one of his initial posts quickly gained traction.

It was opening night for the NBA, and Threads was new and missing essential features — for example, a mechanism to search for posts related to the NBA’s opening night. So he posted asking if there were any NBA Threads users, and it “took off.”

“A lot of discussions started” as a result of that post, he told Mashable. “I was being really intentional about [creating community]. If someone engaged with me,