Meta AI grew 2.5x to become the third-largest consumer AI app, but its 30-day user retention is just 4.5%

@deedydas that growth number is wild, but 4.5% retention is brutal, feels like a spike not a moat

@deedydas what a lot of people don’t know is that due to their emerging markets program where they subsidize data plans for their apps, a lot of people only use Meta AI.

Meta AI has shockingly grown 2.5x in the last 2mos and is poised to be the #3 AI consumer app in the world behind Gemini and ChatGPT.

Sadly, this growth is very likely inorganic given it has by far the worst retention by a mile: only 4.5% users stay in 30 days.

@deedydas Good to see @grok is part of top 3. It's pretty good AI consumer app and the integration with X posts makes it super valuable and most consumer relevant/ friendly AI app.

@deedydas Seems like manipulated data, how can Grok be 2nd?

@deedydas And even those 4.5% are clicking it by mistake on the WhatsApp interface.

Remove WhatsApp attribution channel and see what the number drops to.

@deedydas My dad doesn't use AI chatbots. He wants to remove meta ai from whatsapp search. @Meta team is that too much to ask ?

@deedydas Meta growth (ex-Meta ads guy) is always default-on knobs with hard-to-discover opt-out controls :)

I would measure new user cohort and retention a lot more for the intellectually honest answer, but I'm guessing that would be hard.

@deedydas 2.5x downloads masking 95.5% churn is a distribution story, not a product story. Meta's pushing it through the app but people aren't coming back.

@deedydas Meta family of apps gives any new product a 3.5 Billion user top of funnel to play with.

Fun FB cross sell examples: - Facebook dating having ~20M users is a 0.5% CVR from their base (bad; free software) - meta raybans should sell 10M glasses this year (ok! Non-cheap computer)

@deedydas most of this is people accidentally hitting the AI buttons on IG and FB

and then immediately clicking away confused and upset

@deedydas Annoyingly required if you have one of their AI glasses

This is why looking at the right data matters in every industry.

Growth and retention are not the same thing.

But many founders still miss this.

They get too excited about growth when the real focus should be stickiness.

Acquisition tells you people are curious.

Retention tells you the product is becoming a habit

@deedydas Isn't retention lagging though? I see last updated date is December 2025 - so the metric isn't really surprising given the older models being used were shit.

Muse Spark was a significant update over the older models, so I'd expect similar improvements in retention as well.

@deedydas Non stop notification campaigns on two other apps used by over a billion people a month help.

Suspect the retention won’t be anywhere close to other AIs.

@deedydas they are probably early in the game, the masses are still not using ai for day to day tasks. which is most meta platforms

@deedydas It's just a matter of time until they nail the right workflows to dominate consumer use. Just takes more ab testing, they will get it done.

@deedydas Do you have graphs for US and India only? Looks like meta ai is following threads trend in terms of retention

@deedydas Meta uses many dark patterns to push users into their AI and threads app. Not surprising that their retention numbers are the lowest amongst their peers.

@deedydas Growth to a billion phones means nothing if 95% leave in 30 days. That's not a top app, that's a feature people turn off.