Cloudflare CEO Says Twitter's Traffic Is 'Tanking'

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By Nadeem Sarwar/July 9, 2023 9:46 pm EST

Twitter's users haven't had the best of experiences over the past few months due to some of Elon Musk's controversial business decisions, including limiting the number of tweets you can see each day. On top of that, Instagram's new Twitter clone app Threads is close to clocking 100 million users in less than a week since its launch. Unsurprisingly, it seems the combined effect is reflected in Twitter's declining global traffic.

Twitter traffic tanking. https://t.co/KSIXqNsu40 pic.twitter.com/mLlbuXVR6r

— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) July 9, 2023

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has shared a graph that shows a steady decline in Twitter's traffic since January 2023, hitting an all-year low in July. Prince didn't go into details about why Twitter's traffic has taken a nosedive, but other data analytics services paint a similar picture, including Ahrefs and Statista. The latter company claims that Twitter's global visits dropped from 6.9 billion monthly in January 2023 to 6.4 billion in April 2023.

Elon Musk is killing the indie creative community slowly.

My Impressions have gone down by 40% this week, and my traffic from Twitter is down by 70%.

I mitigated the total blackout of my content with a few other places, but this is unacceptable! pic.twitter.com/LGMnrPhR2J
— Amazing Gaming Productions (@amazinggamepro) July 9, 2023

And it's not just the platform that is witnessing a drop in traffic. Some users have also complained about reduced conversion rates from Twitter ever since the Elon Musk-owned company introduced controversial changes like ending free APIs, shadow-blocking rivals, and more. Additionally, it doesn't help that Twitter is aggressively hawking a paid tier by locking its best features behind a subscription tier, while Threads is planning to add more features without any paywall plans in sight.

Meta is all-in on Threads to topple Twitter

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As Twitter's traffic goes on a downward spiral, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has been having fun on Threads, taking cheeky jabs at Musk, reveling in the explosive sign-up rate, and discussing how Threads can replace Twitter at its own game. "I've always thought there would be a town square app with 1 billion+ people," Zuckerberg replied to a user's analysis of Twitter's monthly active users and its appeal as a public town square. "It's wild that after a few days it seems possible to people that Threads has a shot."

Replying to another post speculating that Twitter has apparently censored Threads, Zuckerberg responded with a curt "concerning," followed by a laughing emoji. Zuckerberg has also expressed hope that Threads will be a kind place with real interactions, compared to the anger and toxicity flourishing on Twitter.

Notably, the biggest difference between Threads and Instagram is that Threads is heavily censored and follows the same kind of NSFW content restrictions as Instagram, while Twitter allows explicit content. That aside, it appears that Threads really wants to maintain its momentum for the long run, and the company has already launched a beta program for Android. As well, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has also detailed a laundry list of features such as a chronological feed and a following feed that are currently in development for Threads.