Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince posted a graph to both Threads and Twitter today (Cloudflare’s communications VP Daniella Vallurupalli confirmed it was him) showing what he says is Twitter’s DNS ranking from January to now. It’s, uh, not a great story! Twitter alternative Threads, meanwhile, has been growing explosively — it’s less than three million from the 100 million user mark. It debuted on Wednesday.
You’re not wrong about there being multiple factors, but I’d argue that this is often the least important factor. The technical features are easily replicated. (See: threads, stories, reels/tiktoks/shorts, etc.)
Network effects, on the other hand, have a stranglehold like no other.
You’re on Facebook because your family’s on there. You’re on Twitter because your favorite meme pages are on there. You’re on Instagram because the photographer you really like is on there. So on and so forth.