The rivalry between billionaire social media owners Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is just gathering momentum.
Zuckerberg’s meta-platforms (ticker: META) launched microblogging site Threads late Wednesday, and it’s already gaining traction — and apparently angering Twitter owner Musk.
The threads reached more than 100 million users as of early Monday, according to data-tracking website Quiver Quantitative.
Analytics firm Similarweb said in an updated report on Monday that web traffic increased in the first two full days Threads was available last week twitter.com down 5% compared to the same days last week. Compared to last year, Twitter traffic was down 11% in those two days, it said, adding that Twitter traffic was down even without threads.
Twitter traffic fell 4% in June compared to the same period last year, according to Similiarweb.
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Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince seemed to confirm this trend in a tweet on Sunday, saying Twitter traffic was “declining.”
What Similarweb described as a “bad sign of app user loyalty” also dropped in Twitter user retention. On Android, the percentage of new users who continue to use the Twitter app regularly after 30 days has dropped from 19% in May 2022 to 16% in May 2023, according to Similarweb. The loyalty of new Instagram users is consistently around 40%, it said.
The data company said Monday it will continue to track engagement, especially since Threads doesn’t offer features like hashtags, which have helped boost Twitter’s popularity.
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Noting the rapid growth in users in his own Threads post Monday, Zuckerberg said, “Threads hit 100 million sign-ups over the weekend. This is mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. I can’t believe it’s only been 5 days!”
The rivalry is getting more and more intense. Musk, who had previously suggested meeting Zuckerberg in a cage fight, tweeted on Sunday calling Zuckerberg by name. He also suggested a competition comparing a specific body part.
Twitter provided an automated emoji response to Barron’s request for comment. A meta speaker was not immediately available.
Write to Liz Moyer at [email protected]