How Twitter is fending off competition from Threads
Twitter is battling Threads to keep its microblogging dominance intact. Ever since Threads's debut, Twitter has placed a lot of emphasis on keeping its users happy. It is certainly related to the number of users the Meta-owned platform garnered in a few days. The sudden rise of Threads coincided with Twitter's newly-introduced rate limits. Let's see how Twitter is dealing with its competitor.
Why does this story matter?
Twitter has had to deal with several competitors during Elon Musk's reign. However, Threads is the toughest rival the company has faced. The platform has Meta's backing and Instagram's over two billion users at its disposal. Meanwhile, Twitter has been struggling to keep its users happy. With a strong competitor around, the Musk-owned company is finally focusing on user-friendly policies.
Sharing ad revenue will improve user engagement
Creators on Twitter have been waiting for a share of ad revenue for a while. The company made the much-anticipated announcement last week. By offering a share in ad revenue, Twitter seeks to make it profitable for popular personalities to stay on the platform. The program will also improve user engagement, as the payout is for ads served in replies.
Some creators are unhappy with revenue-sharing
The program has offered significant payouts to users so far. However, some creators are unhappy with the program. Their concerns include a legacy policy that prevents some creators from subscriptions if their profiles featured "animals or fictional characters" and increased chances of hitting the rate limit. Creators took their issues to Musk, and the Twitter owner announced tweaks to make revenue-sharing more robust.
Twitter will increase rate limit for verified users by 50%
Musk responded to issues highlighted by creators. Regarding the legacy policy, he said, "Consider this silly policy deleted as of now." Twitter introduced rate limits to prevent data scraping. The move has faced a lot of criticism. A user complained they are hitting their rate limit a lot. Musk said Twitter would increase the rate limit for verified users by 50%.
Twitter will also share revenue for profile views
Sharing ad revenue with creators has turned out to be a game-changer for Twitter. The company aims to double down on this. Currently, revenue-sharing is limited to ads served in replies. Musk said Twitter would soon start sharing revenue from profile views. According to him, that should "roughly double payouts." Only views from verified users would count, he added.
Threads's user engagement is on a decline
Threads scared Twitter by onboarding over 100 million users in a few days. However, it seems the hype surrounding the app is dying down. According to SimilarWeb, daily active users on the platform declined by 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14. Meanwhile, Musk said Twitter may see "all time high device user seconds usage this week."
