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I'm not sure how that's entirely relevant. Success of another platform doesn't imply failure of another platform. It's also relatively common for different regions of the world to settle into different social media networks and messaging systems. See: Whatsapp vs iMessage, VKontakte, WeChat, telegram and so on.

There's plenty of metrics to support the fact that Threads is a successful launch.

So just like half the world’s population then. Pretty much a total failure.

More like 175M Threads users alone. They have already been set up for success given Meta's userbase. Now they have to herd that demographic among their different apps, so it was only logical to have a Twitter alternative in order to retain their usebase and profit from Elon's task oriented leadership that has materialized in Xwitter shedding users.

So a platform is a failure unless it appeals to zoomers?