According to The Wall Street Journal, the sudden surge in interest for Meta’s Threads has already had a slight impact on Twitter’s traffic. In just five days, Threads surpassed 100 million sign-ups, as announced by Mark Zuckerberg. This news follows a viral tweet from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who shared a chart showing that Twitter’s traffic has been declining compared to other popular websites since January.
Threads’ Impact on Twitter’s Traffic
During the first two days after Threads’ launch, Twitter’s traffic dropped by 5 percent compared to the same period in the previous week, as reported by web analytics firm SimilarWeb. When comparing year-over-year data, Twitter’s traffic declined by 11 percent. David Carr, a senior insights manager at SimilarWeb, noted that Twitter has been experiencing a decrease in traffic for some time, but Threads seems to be exacerbating the situation.
Twitter’s Executives Highlight User Engagement
While Threads continued to gain momentum, Twitter executives Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino turned their attention to a new metric for user engagement, which they found more encouraging than the declining traffic reports. Yaccarino tweeted about Twitter’s largest usage day since February, and Musk responded, elaborating on the metric of “cumulative user-seconds per day of phone screentime,” which he believed would reach an all-time high.
Tracking User Engagement and Metrics
The T(w)itter Daily account explained the shift in Twitter’s metrics, emphasizing the move from tracking monthly daily active users (mDAU) to user-seconds per day. This new metric aims to exclude bots and individuals who receive notifications but do not open the app. According to T(w)itter Daily, Twitter 2.0 data scientists have confirmed that it is possible to track the amount of time users spend on the app on iOS and Android.
Threads’ Impact on Twitter’s Audience and Engagement
CNN reported that Threads is on track to surpass Twitter’s audience size rapidly. Both SimilarWeb and Cloudflare indicated that Threads’ launch accelerated the downward trend in Twitter’s traffic, posing a clear risk to Twitter’s business. Yaccarino’s and Musk’s tweets introducing a new engagement metric may be an attempt to reassure advertisers that Twitter’s engagement has increased, despite reports of declining traffic. T(w)itter Daily suggested that all the publicity surrounding Threads and its comparison to Twitter’s decline ultimately drives users back to Twitter, reinforcing the notion that all publicity is good publicity.
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