Twitter’s website traffic is “tanking” according to the chief of internet services company Cloudflare, amid signs users are migrating to alternative platforms such as Threads, BlueSky and Mastodon.
On Sunday, Matthew Prince posted a graph from Cloudflare’s ranking of the most popular websites in the world showing Twitter has been in decline since the start of 2023, not long after Elon Musk took over the platform.
The graph shows a significant drop in Cloudflare’s domain server ranking for Twitter in mid-2023 coincided with unpopular changes Musk made to the site, and the launch of the Meta-owned rival platform Threads.
Twitter traffic tanking. https://t.co/KSIXqNsu40 pic.twitter.com/mLlbuXVR6r
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) July 9, 2023“,”url”:”https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1678065025750294532?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1678065025750294532%7Ctwgr%5E232d8e2fdaf1a6a1345dcc9592e7fc90525f649c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashgear.com%2F1334786%2Fcloudflare-ceo-twitter-traffic-tanking%2F”,”id”:”1678065025750294532″,”hasMedia”:false,”role”:”inline”,”isThirdPartyTracking”:false,”source”:”Twitter”,”elementId”:”b1eeaa4d-38a1-4e25-8f82-feb7baaad65b”}}”>
At the end of June, Musk tweeted that Twitter had hit an all-time record in “user seconds”.
In early July, Twitter began forcing people to log in to view tweets. It also set a rate limit for the number of posts different account tiers could read each day – initially 6,000 for paying users and 600 for non-paying users. Musk said the changes were introduced to curb attempts to scrape the website.
The limit has since been increased, and Twitter removed the login requirement last week. The Guardian received the customary auto-reply of a poop emoji when comment was sought from Twitter.
Meta’s answer to Twitter, Threads, surpassed 70 million users in the first three days since its launch on Thursday last week, and is expected to hit 100m on Monday. That excludes users from the European Union who can not access the app until it complies with EU law.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a post on Threads that he believes the
