Noa Moussa // Photo credit: ALASTAIR PIKE / AFP 07:28, July 07, 2023

An unavoidable time, the social network Twitter is now in turmoil. The company, bought by billionaire Elon Musk, is experiencing great difficulties. Chain departures, disgruntled users, increasingly rare advertisers... The blue bird is no longer in great shape.

The application does not hide from being inspired by its main competitor, Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of the Meta group that includes Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, launched Threads in the United States. A new social network that wants to directly confront the blue bird, in great difficulty since its acquisition by Elon Musk.

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Increasingly rare advertisers

It must be said that Twitter multiplies absurd rules. So, since last week, if you don't have a paid Twitter subscription, you can only read 1,000 tweets a day, compared to 10,000 if you follow Twitter Blue. Changes that displease many users and that put the company in difficulty.

"Elon Musk has found a way to push half, if not maybe even 60 percent, of Twitter's biggest advertisers away from the platform. Among the most notable, we have General Motors, Ford and then we had Pfizer for example, to name a few, "says at the microphone of Europe 1 Julien Pillot, economist and teacher-researcher at INSEEC Grande Ecole.

Twitter's value unscrews

"When you know that 90% of historical Twitter's revenue is based on advertising, you understand that all is not very well," he continues. This exodus is largely explained by the decline in moderation. Some ads could more frequently end up between two insulting tweets, which quickly embarrassed brands.

The leak is comparable to a hemorrhage according to Elon Musk himself. The billionaire announced last March that Twitter had lost half of its value since its acquisition in October 2022.