Surprised? Twitter Blocks Links to Threads While Reports Say Traffic Is Down

Twitter, under the leadership of new CEO Linda Yaccarino, is facing accusations of selectively blocking links to the website of its competitor, Meta’s Threads. 

Reports have surfaced claiming that Twitter is intentionally blocking access to Threads.net’s website in Twitter searches. Users on Twitter have seen the change particularly when using the search operator “url:threads.net,” which yielded no results. Typically, this operator would retrieve tweets containing links to the specified website.

When the block was implemented is unclear, but this isn’t the first instance of Twitter blocking links to a competitor’s website. It previously censored links to Substack Notes after its launch.

While Twitter owner Elon Musk has been spending considerable bandwidth trying to provoke Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg since the launch of Threads, Yaccarino has been trying a softer, more positive approach (although she couldn’t help but use an allusion). 

She recently tweeted about Twitter’s recent booming usage, countering reports that suggested a decline in traffic since Threads’ debut. However, she did not provide specific metrics or comparative analysis to substantiate her claims. Musk, who replied to the tweet, also only managed to give the name of the metric and a prediction that it was going to hit a new record.

Data from web analytics firm Similarweb and Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince appeared to support the reports of declining Twitter traffic. Similarweb reported a 5% decrease in web traffic during the first two days after Threads’ release compared to the previous week, and an 11% drop compared to the same days in 2022. Prince’s tweet displayed a graph showing a noticeable decline in Twitter’s DNS rankings, indicating a decrease in traffic.

Musk is right to feel threatened (Threadened?). Threads, which connects to the Instagram userbase, was able to amass 100 million users in just five days. Even the super popular AI chatbot from OpenAI ChatGPT took two months to get to that number.

Brands are already getting more from Threads

A recent report from Quartz, which cited data from a Website Planet study, found that brands are already getting more engagement from Threads compared to Twitter — even with yet smaller follower bases on the new platform. 

Website Planet reviewed 30 brands that made the post (or different posts but simultaneously) on the two platforms and found that 87% of the brands analyzed generated more likes on Threads than on Twitter. The brands also saw 8 times more likes on Threads, on average.

Information for this story was found via TechCrunch, Quartz, Twitter, and the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to the organizations discussed. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.