Within the first week of its existence, “Threads,” the new Twitter-like app from the tech company Meta, saw a colossal decline in usage. The app originally attracted around 100 million users but has tapered off dramatically. Jody Cerrano reports,

Zuckerberg’s statements about returning users coincide with estimates from third-party traffic analysts that reported the big dip in Threads users last week. At that time, Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, said that Threads’ daily active users on iOS and Android were down by 20%.

The company added that traffic was not the only thing affected. Time spent on the app per user also fell, according to Sensor Tower, by 50% — from 20 minutes to 10 minutes.

On Monday, the analyst Similarweb reported an even bigger drop in daily active users on Threads on Android. Similarweb found that between July 7 and July 14, daily active users on Threads had been reduced by more than half, from 49 million to 23.6 million.

-Jody Cerrano, Zuckerberg Urges Calm After Major Dip in Threads Active Users, Says App Is ‘On a Good Path’ – The Messenger

Zuckerberg encouraged calm in the wake of the decline and wants to orient the goal toward retention over the long term. Threads has merited some criticism for imitating Twitter too much, and for being too censorious in their speech guidelines.