"Users" yes, but that's not why Twitter was "big" (in quotes because, by user base, Twitter wasn't big at all).
Twitter's cultural cachet was because you could link and embed Tweets. Whatever platform you're on, viewing things on Twitter "just works" if you have a URL. That means journalists can point to things on Twitter, post things on Twitter, and the normal mechanisms of internet virality mean they can spread through basically any medium (i.e. how many times are Twitter links shown on other platforms?)
It's also worth noting that "influencer" types don't - or didn't - use Twitter directly. They used various bits of API management software to curate their appearance.
Threads has none of that: without a web browser experience, you can't share and link things on Threads in other mediums. There's no possibility of embedded Threads posts being a thing. And that means, fundamentally, Threads can never actually pull sign-ups by organic virality - or pull views from it either. It's notable the big sign up wave happened right as it looked like Twitter was going to block viewing Tweets for users without an account - that was (correctly) interpreted as the final nail in the coffin (and was rolled back).
Twitter's cultural cachet was because you could link and embed Tweets. Whatever platform you're on, viewing things on Twitter "just works" if you have a URL. That means journalists can point to things on Twitter, post things on Twitter, and the normal mechanisms of internet virality mean they can spread through basically any medium (i.e. how many times are Twitter links shown on other platforms?)
It's also worth noting that "influencer" types don't - or didn't - use Twitter directly. They used various bits of API management software to curate their appearance.
Threads has none of that: without a web browser experience, you can't share and link things on Threads in other mediums. There's no possibility of embedded Threads posts being a thing. And that means, fundamentally, Threads can never actually pull sign-ups by organic virality - or pull views from it either. It's notable the big sign up wave happened right as it looked like Twitter was going to block viewing Tweets for users without an account - that was (correctly) interpreted as the final nail in the coffin (and was rolled back).