The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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Let's see how he's doing now:


Apparently videos watched is about 25% of the 'tweets viewed' figure usually.
This is with him presumably being at the top of pyramid in terms of discovery as well so what does that say about all the folks that don't quite have that large of an audience? Why would they even waste their time bothering with it?
 
Twitters dead to me now that you need an account to even search it or read comments on tweets.
Wat a ridiculous business killing decision, if it's really to stop the AI scraping twitter why not just add captcha?

I hope threads kills it and elon can become more of a meme than he already is
 
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Twitters dead to me now that you need an account to even search it or read comments on tweets.
Wat a ridiculous business killing decision, if it's really to stop the AI scraping twitter why not just add captcha?

I have to say that is the stupidest thing he has one so far.

I think its his attempt to drive up the number of accounts. There would have been tens of thousands of people that followed people but never had an account.

He must have looked at the amount of traffic compared to accounts.
 
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Because they don't really work and there's plenty of research that shows they drive away 'normies'
Can't drive away more people than forcing account creation does.

Surely Add revenue is Add revenue.

Might have worked if it hadn't been for that pesky zuckerberg launching Threads
 
How many people used to browse twitter without an account?
Probably almost everyone before they decided to sign up? loads of people don't feel as if they need an account because all they want to do is read tweets and not make them?
I guess they will go to Threads now instead.


How many people do you think would signn up to these forums if you couldn't read them first and be a lurker? seems to me like twitter is just going to kill it self as it's member base dies of without new blood taking up the spots
 
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How many people used to browse twitter without an account?

I've never used an account - every time I thought about making one, as I did use the site quite a bit, they'd do something hostile towards users and/or people browsing without an account including to try and force people with the stick to create an account, so I'd hold out on principle so to speak.

Now I'm pretty much done with the site and going elsewhere (though it is still possible to do most things on the site with a few Google tricks without ever touching Twitter itself directly), I'm sure Elon won't miss me though.
 
How many people used to browse twitter without an account?
It's definitely a good question, and I can see why it may have been tempting for Elon to want to get those users to sign up, and this would be a simple solution to that, though clearly the wrong way to go about it and likely will push people further away.

Though I wonder if you really mean "browse without an account" rather than, "browse while not signed in"

Had Elon done this when he first took over, it may not have been received as poorly. The trouble is, Elon has done one thing after the other to show he's not interested in improving twitter for the users, but just to make more money for twitter. So bad decisions after bad decisions, eventually, people will have just had enough, as appears to be the case with this latest decision.

I have previously browser twitter almost ebitrley only when someone links to a post in these threads, and I read the post, and some comments and then leave. This was done without signing in, thoogh it would sometimes ask me to, I would deny as I just want to read and move on.

Elon may have even seen some stats to say something like 80 percent of viewers that aren't signed in, actually have accounts already. So he thought, why not just force them to click a few buttons, have their pc/mobile auto fill out the sign in form, and then happy days for Elon, he can now better understand and track the viewers habits with a small amount of effort from those viewers.

But people are so done with twitter. And with threads taking advantage of the situation, it's a no brainier. Move over to the site that has a trakc record of successfully running a social media site, that won't be gone any time soon, and isn't likely to make random changes for the worse 50 times in the space of 6 months.

I think something that you can easily compare it to it online stores. Sometimes I'm looking for an item and I find it only for say £20, I add to basket, go to purchase, but now the site wants me to sign up for a full account. Why can't I just guest purchase? Why do I need to make a full blown account with them. It's minimal effort sure, but I don't know if this is a one off purchase, or maybe something I'll come back to them in a few months. I want to try before I make yet another account. Instead end up just going to amazon, perhaps paying a tiny bit more, and then enjoying how easy that was. Twitter can be the same. I just want to browse first.most users don't even post, they just read and view the content/ads. When you force users to do something as simple as signing up, you're putting up a barrier, and until you've won over those users to become someone who posts, or perhaps finds a few accounts that want to follow, they have no need to sign up. And the fact those viewers are using twitter without being signed up.
 
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How many people used to browse twitter without an account?
Everyone before they've signed up?

Not to mention a huge number of people who might be looking on a computer they don't want to sign into it from, and in browsers etc where they're not signed in.

It's this really weird thing, people don't want to sign up to every site they visit once a week or at random just to see what someone has linked to, and one of the really big things that made Twitter the success it was, was the fact that you could pop onto any browser and check things like local alerts from your area from various agencies very quickly and easily.
First Musk decided that he wanted to get every cent he could from organisations that don't have the money to pay his stupidly large fees for "api access" especially after he killed off all the third party apps that gave functions the tweet deck didn't (and now he's moved that behind blue tick, without fixing any of it's long standing bugs), then he decided that you had to log in to see anything.

This, if anything hurts Twitter financially immediately, as the remaining advertisers on twitter know now that their adverts won't be seen by anyone who doesn't have an account so Twitter is even less useful to them now that it was, and it means that people are going to have to actively want to see what is on twitter (good luck!) and sign up/in to see what adverts are left, as several people have said, that's something most people won't be willing to do.

I've had websites that I've looked at to buy stuff I really wanted drive me away because they required things like signing up before I could see the pricing, or details like delivery costs, the fact they couldn't say "our UK shipping rate is X" in a FAQ or similar but "enter your full postal address to see delivery" has had me close the tab.

My brother actively tells Google to deliberately ignore results from several very popular sites because they require signing in to see things like the full image when you do a search*, and they've poisoned the search results to the point where half the first page will be to the site if you don't.



*He builds models and will often do searches for inspiration/background info on how to get a certain result, so having hundreds of results that require signing in to see is an utter waste of time.
 
How many people used to browse twitter without an account?

I dont have an account and now I am blocked from any information from any organisation that uses Twitter to give out their information.

This is bad for them as well as those that dont have accounts.
 
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It's definitely a good question, and I can see why it may have been tempting for Elon to want to get those users to sign up, and this would be a simple solution to that, though clearly the wrong way to go about it and likely will push people further away.

Though I wonder if you really mean "browse without an account" rather than, "browse while not signed in"
Probably both to be fair, although did people honestly just fire Twitter up and start browsing the front page so to speak, there was a lot of **** there with nothing of real value unless specifically following people - in my opinion of course.
Had Elon done this when he first took over, it may not have been received as poorly. The trouble is, Elon has done one thing after the other to show he's not interested in improving twitter for the users, but just to make more money for twitter. So bad decisions after bad decisions, eventually, people will have just had enough, as appears to be the case with this latest decision.

I have previously browser twitter almost ebitrley only when someone links to a post in these threads, and I read the post, and some comments and then leave. This was done without signing in, thoogh it would sometimes ask me to, I would deny as I just want to read and move on.

Elon may have even seen some stats to say something like 80 percent of viewers that aren't signed in, actually have accounts already. So he thought, why not just force them to click a few buttons, have their pc/mobile auto fill out the sign in form, and then happy days for Elon, he can now better understand and track the viewers habits with a small amount of effort from those viewers.
I think everyone can agree he's gone about the whole 'you must be logged in to view twitter' in the most stupid way possible - for one I don't believe there was any warning whatsoever - and that might have placated a lot of people that have seemingly taken this the worst. I stated a week or so ago that at most it was a minor inconvenience *to me* in that i had to dig out the password to twitter and sign in on this laptop, and I would expect that's the same view that a majority of average twitter account holders have (bear in mind although I've had an account for over 10 years I've not actually tweeted once :p). I do think the writing was on the wall for a long time regarding being able to view twitter whilst not being logged in though.
But people are so done with twitter. And with threads taking advantage of the situation, it's a no brainier. Move over to the site that has a trakc record of successfully running a social media site, that won't be gone any time soon, and isn't likely to make random changes for the worse 50 times in the space of 6 months.
See I think the people that are 'so done with twitter' have been for a long time and were just waiting for either bluesky or threads to launch, threads has seemingly got the jump on bluesky (I have asked what happens to bluesky now, but that seems to have been missed by everyone) and from what I can understand although sign ups are high (let's be honest they were always going to pull a load of people regardless thanks to the IG element), the user experience of threads hasn't exactly been all roses. I think a lot of people have been shocked at how basic it is and I've seen a lot of folks saying they won't be using it as their main social media platform of choice because of it. Will they be able to pull those users back once they make improvements or will it be always 'tainted' in the eyes of the average user? Time will tell.
I think something that you can easily compare it to it online stores. Sometimes I'm looking for an item and I find it only for say £20, I add to basket, go to purchase, but now the site wants me to sign up for a full account. Why can't I just guest purchase? Why do I need to make a full blown account with them. It's minimal effort sure, but I don't know if this is a one off purchase, or maybe something I'll come back to them in a few months. I want to try before I make yet another account. Instead end up just going to amazon, perhaps paying a tiny bit more, and then enjoying how easy that was. Twitter can be the same. I just want to browse first.most users don't even post, they just read and view the content/ads. When you force users to do something as simple as signing up, you're putting up a barrier, and until you've won over those users to become someone who posts, or perhaps finds a few accounts that want to follow, they have no need to sign up. And the fact those viewers are using twitter without being signed up.
Maybe it's my age, but I do not understand the appeal of browsing a site like twitter without having a handful of people in mind to follow, text-based social media sites arent the same as video ones such as tiktok/youtube shorts (or maybe even IG?) in that they are essentially designed in mind for people without an account to view stupid ****.
 
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