Meta’s rival to Elon Musk’s X is still growing, just not as quickly. What will the next year hold?
A time and a half ago, vestments were but an eyeblink in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.
Now, the rival to Elon Musk’s X has reached further than 175 million yearly active druggies, the Meta CEO blazoned on Wednesday. His advertisement comes as Vestments is about to hit its first anniversary. Back when it arrived in the App Store on July 5th, 2023, Musk was taking a stranding ball to the service formerly called Twitter and goading Zuckerberg into a nonfictional pen match that noway happened. A time later, vestments are still growing at a steady clip — albeit not as snappily as its huge launch — while Musk hasn’t participated in similar criteria for X since he took over.
As with any social network, and especially for vestments, yearly druggies only tell part of the growth story. It’s telling that, unlike Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, Meta hasn’t yet participated in diurnal stoner figures. That elision suggests vestments are still getting a lot of flyby business from people who have yet to become regular druggies. I’ve heard from Meta workers in recent months that much of the app’s growth is still coming from being promoted inside Instagram. Both apps partake in the same account system, which isn’t anticipated to change.
Indeed still, 175 million yearly druggies for a one-time app is nothing to turn your nose up at, especially given Meta’s spotty track record of launching standalone app trials over the times. Zuckerberg has been open to me and others, saying he thinks Vestments has a real shot at being the company’s coming billion-stoner app. To keep the growth story going, I’m told Meta is concentrated on requests where it thinks there’s an opening to take further request shares from X — Japan, for illustration.
For now, Vestments is still a financial loss leader for Meta, though it can clearly go to fund it indefinitely. Internally, I’m told directors are talking about turning on advertisement investments in the coming time, though the exact plan is still over. It’s easy to see how vestments could plug into Instagram’s advertisement system. And given Meta’s purposeful decision to deprioritize politics and encourage unconcerned content, it could be a compelling place for advertisers looking for a further brand-safe volition toX.
“It would be great if it gets really, really big, but I ’m actually more interested in if it becomes culturally applicable and if it gets hundreds of millions of druggies,” the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, told me when vestments first launched. A time later, the app surely has further progress to make on the artistic front. But the fact that it’s still growing means Meta has the runway to make that be.
