I'm all for shitting on Xitter, but this is a pretty bad article. It's written like somebody put it through Google Translate a few times, and doesn't cite any sources for any of its claims. Closest I could find was this Business Insider story on a report by Apptopia, which only says that its downloads in various app stores declined 30%, not its overall userbase.
I haven't had the chance to look up the data myself, but if downloads did decline in a way that's unprecedented its a strong loss leader. To be really interesting though you'd have to couple it with other metrics.
Edit: There are people implying they work or worked at Twitter. They didn't.
Declining downloads simply means a slowing of growth, whereas this is claiming a user decline. That only shows up in traffic logs, transit commits, or CDN account usage data.
Yeah and also, in capitalism, if a company ceases to grow, there's a good chance it will vaporize soon after. It's not a causation, but it's a notable correlation.
Yup! There are people out there with big pockets watching for stats much subtler than this. It doesn't always mean much taken on its own, but as a whole can paint an interesting picture.
I know there’s meant to be a comma after ‘whole’. But I just pictured someone dumping a whole can of paint on a canvas and yelling “time!” Before walking over and slapping it on an easel at an auction and selling it for millions, while still dripping.
Phone replacement is a high seasonality situation. CDN usage and access logs will absolutely show whether usage has declined or not. Release an iPhone and you see a major spike in new downloads, otherwise it's probably all pretty much background noise.
My guess is everything involving Twitter has been on a decline, and the things I did know I'm not able to share.