Mastodawn

Christopher Mims Jul 15, 2023

There’s been a lot of chatter over the past week about what’s happening to Twitter’s traffic and engagement, as well as that of Threads, and whether the two are related and ~what’s it all mean for the future of social media~

This is my attempt to cut through some of the noise, with actual data – and empirical observations.

All derives from this week’s column in the @WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/heres-how-twitter-could-become-irrelevant-b2b027af

Here’s How Twitter Could Become Irrelevant

Threads, from Instagram, has many distinct qualities that make it the first credible threat to Elon Musk’s vision of what a social network should be

WSJ

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Christopher Mims Jul 15, 2023

Here’s the conclusion, for those who want the headline and then would rather move on with their lives.

Traffic to Twitter appears to be declining over time. Threads seems to be responsible for a little of that decline, when it first launched. But really, what’s happening is a story of long-term decline in engagement with Twitter. 2/

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Christopher Mims Jul 15, 2023

Another conclusion:

Much has been made of the surge and sudden drop in usage of Threads.

If you’ve never looked at the chart of the usage of a service when it goes supersonic, you might naively think this means Threads is already in trouble.

But a saw-tooth pattern where adoption is followed by a decline in usage – and then subsequent waves of re-engagement – is normal.

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Dr M

@mimsical 50% loss tho… and no sign of that slowing… it shows many are not liking what they see. Add to that that people cant leave who want to due to not wanting to lose insta and those numbers are even worse. Not much promising there. All it says is that people are desperate for a twitter replacement that feels the same.