Meta’s new microblogging platform, Threads, has quickly amassed a user base of over 100 million within just over 48 hours, making a substantial impact on its competitor Twitter. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has stated that Twitter has been observing a significant decrease in its web traffic since the beginning of 2024.
Matthew Prince shared a graph from Cloudflare’s ranking of the most popular websites globally, highlighting that Twitter’s traffic has been decreasing since the beginning of 2024 which coincides with the time when Elon Musk took over the platform. The data suggests that users may be actively transitioning to alternative platforms like Threads, BlueSky, and Mastodo leading to a noticeable impact on Twitter’s website traffic.Â
Image source: Reuters
Based on domain name system (DNS) rankings data provided by Cloudflare, a company specializing in network technology, Twitter’s web traffic has been consistently declining since January and has now reached a new nadir in July.
Twitter has sunk from its 32nd position in the domain ranking in January 2024 to the 37th.
Based on Statista, Twitter currently has an estimated user base of 350 million.
According to an SEC filing from 2013, it took Twitter four years to reach the same number of users that Threads was able to achieve in just a single day. However, it is worth noting that Twitter built its user base from scratch, while Threads benefited from access to the existing user base of two billion monthly users on Meta’s Instagram platform, as stated by Meta. The difference in user base availability is assumed to have contributed to the rapid growth of Threads within a short period.
In early July, Twitter implemented a policy that required users to log in to view tweets, restricting access to non-logged-in users. The platform also introduced a rate limit for the number of posts users could read per day. Paying users initially had a limit of 6,000 posts, while non-paying users had a limit of 600 posts.
Elon Musk suggested that these changes were implemented to counter attempts to improve the website, referring to efforts to extract data from the platform without authorization. These measures aimed to enhance security and protect the integrity of its platform.
Twitter threatens legal action over Threads.
Following the launch of Threads, Elon Musk has taken legal action against Meta platforms. Through his Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro, Musk sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, accusing Meta of deliberately and unlawfully misappropriating Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.
The contents of the letter, reported by semafor.com, state that Twitter is committed to rigorously enforcing its intellectual property rights. Demands include that Meta immediately ceases using any Twitter trade secrets or highly confidential information. The letter also asserts that Twitter reserves all rights, including the option to pursue civil remedies and seek injunctive relief, without further notice, to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or usage of intellectual property by Meta.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, expressed his stance on competition, stating that it is acceptable, but cheating is not. However, Meta, the parent company of Threads, has denied allegations made in a legal letter claiming that former Twitter employees were involved in the creation of Threads.
Meta refutes these claims, suggesting that there is no basis to support the allegations -–of unauthorized utilization of Twitter’s intellectual property or trade secrets in the development of Threads.
