Connor Hayes –- a longtime Meta executive — has been named the leader of Threads, the tech giant’s newest platform in its family of popular social media networks.
For the past two years, Instagram head Adam Mosseri has been the overseer for Threads, starring in videos designed to help Instagram users’ migration to the new social messaging platform, while Threads competes directly with X, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
According to a report from Axios, Hayes will take on the responsibilities of Mosseri as Threads expands its recently launched opportunities for advertisers and continues to grow to over 350 million monthly active users.
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“Given Threads’ maturity, we think we need a dedicated app lead who can focus all of their time on helping Threads move forward,” Mosseri wrote in a Thursday staff memo obtained by Axios.
Mosseri added that Hayes will start his new role by mid-September, overseeing product managers, engineers, designers, data scientists, and user experience researchers, and is expected to report to Mosseri directly.
For the past 14 years, Hayes has assumed product roles for Meta and Instagram, acting as the company’s vice president of product for generative AI for the past two-and-a-half years. In addition, Hayes was part of the team that built the original prototype of Threads before it launched in 2023.
According to market intelligence provider Similarweb, Threads is close to surpassing X in terms of daily active users.
Right now, Threads has about 115 million DAUs on mobile, compared to X’s 132 million. App analytics provider AppFigures also released data this week that lists Threads as the second-most downloaded app in June on the App Store, behind only ChatGPT.
Furthermore, Meta is in the process of allowing users to sign up to Threads with their Facebook profile, in addition to their Instagram account, which could provide another wave of Threads downloads and a potential boost in in-app engagement.
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