Twitter CEO says platform is growing but web traffic data shows "Twitter traffic tanking"

Who needs to see a cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg when the battle between Musk's Twitter and Zuck's Threads is heating up. Just the other day, we told you that Threads had attracted close to 100 million subscribers in well under a week. Meanwhile, Musk's handpicked successor at Twitter, CEO Linda Yaccarino, has been trying to downplay reports that the early success of Threads has led traffic to drop off sharply at Twitter.

According to TechCrunch, while Yaccarino has been trying to show her best "What, me worry?" look, at the beginning of this week Twitter users reported that links to Threads.net's website were blocked in Twitter searches. As a result, Twitter users had a hard time finding certain conversations and user profiles on Threads. 

Meanwhile, in an attempt to convince advertisers that things are looking up at Twitter, Yaccarino sent out a tweet stating that traffic is growing. "Don’t want to leave you hanging by a thread… but Twitter, you really outdid yourselves! Last week we had our largest usage day since February. There’s only ONE Twitter. You know it. I know it," Twitter's CEO tweeted. The executive's tweet contradicts a tweet from Cloudflare co-founder & CEO Matthew Prince that shows declining traffic for Twitter.

At the same time, web analytics and data company Similarweb said that web traffic for Twitter was down 5% during the first two days that Threads was available to the public. That decline was based on the web traffic generated by Twitter the previous week. On a year-over-year basis, during the first two days of Threads' availability, Twitter's web traffic had plunged 11%.

There is no question that helping Threads' explosive growth is the connection that the social media site has with Instagram. To become a Threads subscriber, you need to have an Instagram account and once you sign up for Threads, your Instagram profile shows a special Threads badge. And if you delete your Threads account, you are forced to delete your Instagram account too.

If you want to join Threads, those with an iPhone can install the app from the App Store by tapping on this link. Those with an Android device can get the app from the Play Store by tapping on this link.

If Threads continues to add subscribers at this pace and Twitter continues to see traffic decline, the upstart competitor from Meta could overtake Twitter which reported having 238 million monetizable daily active users last summer in its last quarterly earnings report as a public company before Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion.

Hmm. Perhaps a cage match between Musk and Zuckerberg would be more entertaining and fun to watch. But in the world of tech, the battle between Threads and Twitter might have more implications for the future of social media.