This week's roundup covers what Threads' third birthday tells us about the platform's evolving identity and brand opportunity, what record World Cup viewership means for the future of soccer—and brand investment—in America and new research on how the disappearance of local newspapers is quietly changing how companies approach corporate social responsibility.
Threads Celebrates 3rd Anniversary With Tiny Hats…and More Users.
What happened: Three years after launching as Meta's answer to Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter), Threads has reached 500 million monthly users—matching X's current scale—and is becoming something distinct from what it set out to be.
Rather than a news and politics hub, it increasingly resembles Reddit, with users gravitating toward communities built around K-pop, the WNBA, dating, books and TV shows.
Threads user Alli Kimmel told The New York Times why she enjoys the platform: "A lot of Threads users are in their 30s and 40s, and it's more centered on silly, fun, random posts than being a politicized space."
Meta has leaned into that identity, building features around community behavior: dedicated group sections, badges for top posters, and "Your Algo" feed control. Organic growth continues to accelerate across the globe—engagement time jumped 80% in South Korea and 130% in Japan in the past year.
The revenue question remains open. Ads launched in January, but Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has quieted expectations—according to The Times, on a recent investor call he mentioned AI 49 times and Threads twice.
Communications Takeaways: An informal LinkedIn poll run by PRNEWS’s Nicole Schuman, shows that usage has picked up for some personal use since the platform’s inception, but overall use, particularly brand use, has remained slim. So while there may be so many users signed up, transparent engagement numbers from Meta would be helpful.
Poll respondents showed mixed reviews on Threads use. Jeremy Simon, EVP, Head of Audience Experience at /prompt., says “I know people/brands are having a lot of success there recently but I still find it just as toxic if not more toxic at times than X.”
And Scott Steinhardt, Head of Communications at Reality Defender, had similar notes. He posted: “X is where you go to get hate speech. Bluesky is where you get to get hated on for existing. Threads is where you go to get coupons on Wonder Bread.”
Melanie McGovern, Director of Marketing and Communications at Person Centered Services Care Coordination Organization, LLC, stands somewhere in the middle. Her algorithm is not allowing for many brand messages.
“I love that I don’t get inundated with brand messages on Threads,” she says. “However, the level of rage bait on Threads is bordering on annoying. Once you get your algorithm down and find your people, it’s great for discussions.”
Emily Marcus, CEO at Emily Blair Media, LLC, is a fan, and rather than seeing it as just another platform to manage, she sees it serving as an extension.
“Threads feels like an organic extension of Instagram—rather than just consuming content, it presents an opportunity to open conversations around said photo or video,” she says. “I love that every time I open the app, I’m picking up right where I left off on Instagram. The algorithm also works incredibly well by leading me to subgroups to discuss very niche areas of interest.”
What’s interesting is the brand data in contrast with the poll. A recent Sprout Social Pulse Survey found that 57% of marketers managing brand accounts are already posting on Threads. And 26% are creating content specifically for Threads instead of recycling posts from somewhere else.
“Threads reaching 500 million monthly users is a milestone, but the number isn't what caught my attention,” said Brittany Hennessy, VP of Social Intelligence Evangelism at Sprout Social, in a LinkedIn post. “It's the feeling. It reminds me of an earlier internet. Less polished. More conversational. More curiosity than performance.”
Hennessy notes that every social platform eventually develops its own culture.
If Threads is bringing even a little bit of that [early social media nostalgia] back, maybe it's time to give it another look,” she says. “I mean, if I could resurrect Myspace I absolutely would, so this might be the closest we're going to get.”
And if you are looking for a brand that absolutely gets Threads and the audience? Make sure to check out the United States Postal Service thread.
“Threads is where we get to show the most personality,” says Mary Beth Levin, Manager, Social Media Strategy and Analytics at the USPS.
World Cup Draws Record U.S. Viewership
What happened: The game may not have ended in the result U.S. fans wanted, but the World Cup and Fox Sports won regardless.
The U.S. men's national team lost to Belgium 4-1 Monday night, but the audience watching made history anyway. Monday's game drew 30 million viewers on Fox, with a further 12 million tuning into the Spanish-language broadcast on Telemundo and Peacock. For context, those numbers surpassed Game 5 of this year’s historic NBA Finals and Game 7 of the 2025 World Series.
"I think we can now say conclusively that it (soccer) has broken through," Mike Mulvihill told the Wall Street Journal. Mulvihill oversees insights and analytics at Fox Sports. Convenient North American game times, Cinderella runs like Cape Verde's extended tournament stay, and multiple matches decided in overtime or penalty shootouts kept viewers locked in throughout.
Communication takeaways: For communicators, the viewership story is the capstone on everything the World Cup represents: the tournament didn't just attract an existing soccer audience—it built a new one, and brands that invested early captured an audience that grew far beyond original projections.
So even beyond that U.S. red card controversy, how can U.S. soccer take that new audience and harness it?
Patrick Wixted, Managing Director, Sports, at Golin Ketchum, says the 2026 World Cup may be remembered as the moment U.S. soccer’s potential became a reality.
“The tournament created awareness, but awareness is only valuable if the soccer ecosystem can give fans somewhere to go after the final whistle and this World Cup trophy is awarded,” Wixted says.
He also notes that the tournament did not just create fans, but also permission.
“Permission for brands to invest more aggressively,” he says. “Permission for brands to think beyond sponsorship and into culture. Permission for soccer to sit alongside football, basketball and baseball as a year-round part of the American sports conversation. The winners won't be the organizations celebrating the record audience today. They'll be the ones building for the audience that remains tomorrow."
And with the Women’s World Cup coming back in 2027, brands can already work on maintaining and capitalizing on that soccer fever.
As Local Newspapers Disappear, Corporate Accountability May Be Going With Them
What happened: New research published in the INFORMS journal Organization Science finds that the decline of local newspapers is reshaping not just media coverage, but corporate behavior itself. The study examined local newspaper declines across U.S. counties from 1996 to 2014 and found that as local papers disappeared, companies changed how they approached corporate social responsibility—in ways that depended heavily on what replaced the coverage.
The researchers identified a dual loss: local newspapers historically served both as watchdogs holding companies accountable and as platforms giving public visibility to genuine good citizenship. When both functions disappeared simultaneously, companies responded differently depending on whether other platforms—financial analysts, rating agencies, national outlets— stepped in to fill the gap.
"When nonlocal intermediaries remain strong, firms face continued scrutiny and retain channels to broadcast positive initiatives," the researchers found. When those platforms are absent, oversight weakens and incentives for CSR diminish.
Companies, in short, tend to do less and say less when no one is watching or amplifying.
Communications takeaways: The findings carry a pretty straightforward implication: firms with established communication capabilities—regular press release distribution, relationships beyond the local paper—were better positioned to sustain CSR visibility when local coverage eroded. The study also connects directly to the local news data reported earlier this year: with 77% of U.S. counties lacking local education coverage and 76% lacking local health coverage, the informational vacuum the researchers describe is already well underway.
Tim O’Brien, Consultant at O’Brien Communications, edited a CSR report for a multinational bank for three years, so when he read this story, he found it enlightening, but also a confirmation of what he’s seeing in the industry.
“The study authors mention press releases as a cornerstone tactic, but for firms to overcome challenges created by a declining newspaper sector, they need to have robust online channels and other regular means of communications to each stakeholder group,” O’Brien says.
He also believes that stakeholders including employees, investors, customers, vendors, partners and local communities each should have a dedicated means to keep them apprised of company news and its corporate citizenship efforts.
“Just because you lose one channel for communication—newspapers—doesn’t mean you should settle for less awareness among those who are important to your firm,” he says.
In addition to publishing those press releases on your website? O’Brien suggests social media, push emails and newsletters, internal and external town hall meetings, video, dedicated landing pages, podcasts and livestreams to help companies hold themselves accountable.
Nicole Schuman is Managing Editor of PRNEWS.