The great Twitter migration that maybe kind of wasn't

Yours Truly

Jan 19, 2024 — 5 min read

This post is migrated from the old Wordpress blog. Some things may be broken.

What’s the stronger force, inertia or outrage? When Elon Musk took over Twitter and promptly set about demolishing it, there was a cacaphony of bleetings on the platform threatening a mass exodus. I can be somewhat dispariging about it because I was among them. The day Elon rebranded it as the public domain unicode character 𝕏 I downloaded my Tweets archive, activated the 30-day account deletion process, logged out and never looked back. I held my ground up until then: Elon wouldn’t drive me off of Twitter, I was there first. If anyone should have gone he should have. But I made no such promise about something called x.com, so that was my offboarding opportunity. I wasn’t alone, but quite a lot of people have only kind of left in spite of all the news and hype about “The Great Twitter Exodus.”

Turns out, there’s a paper about it, User Migration across Multiple Social Media Platforms, published by researchers at Arizona State University. I uploaded it to ChatPDF to ask it some questions*.

Yours Truly: What was the main finding of this research?

The PDF: Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, migrants have a strong inertia for Twitter over other platforms, and that users are currently uncertain about their opinions on newer platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

Yours truly: How many Twitter accounts were in your study?

The PDF: The study identified a total of 14,270 migrants from Twitter to alternative platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon. After removing 270 migrants with deleted or suspended accounts, the study focused on 14,000 migrants with unique handles.

Yours truly: That’s a pretty low number of deleted accounts. What were the remainers coming back for?

The PDF: Many users who migrated to alternative platforms, such as Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon, could not show long-term success and eventually returned to Twitter.

Yours truly: What’s success in this context all about?

The PDF: Many users who migrated to these alternative platforms could not sustain their engagement and activity levels over the long term and eventually returned to Twitter.

Yours truly: Tell me about the people migrating to Mastodon.

The PDF: Users who migrated to Mastodon exhibited a higher degree of loyalty to the platform compared to other alternatives, such as Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads. Mastodon had the highest level of expressed loyalty among its migrants, indicating that users who migrated to Mastodon were more committed to the platform than to other alternatives. This finding suggests that Mastodon had a unique appeal to users who were seeking a different social media experience, leading to a higher degree of brand loyalty among its migrating users.

Yours truly: How did it go for people moving to Bluesky?

The PDF: Bluesky had the highest engagement levels among migrating users compared to Threads and Mastodon. Bluesky migrants perceive Twitter as a primary complement, leading to distinct activity levels compared to Threads and Mastodon. This suggests that Bluesky was able to capitalize on the conflicts between Twitter and its competitors, such as Threads and Mastodon, and secure its spot in the competitive landscape by offering a complementary experience to Twitter.

Yours truly: So people who liked Bluesky liked it because it was like the Twitter they knew, but those who stuck with Mastodon did so because it was a very different experience?

The PDF: Yes, that’s correct. The study indicated that migrating users perceived Bluesky as a primary complement to Twitter, suggesting that Bluesky was seen as being more complementary to the Twitter experience. On the other hand, the study also highlighted that Mastodon offered a different experience compared to Twitter, as evidenced by the higher level of expressed loyalty among its migrating users. This suggests that users perceived Mastodon as a distinct and different platform compared to Twitter.

Yours truly: Threads is a bit rubbish, isn’t it?

The PDF: The study does not explicitly make a qualitative judgment about Threads being “rubbish.” Instead, it focuses on analyzing user migration patterns, engagement levels, and brand loyalty across different social media platforms, including Threads. The findings provide insights into user behaviors, perceptions, and activities related to Threads and other platforms. If you have specific concerns or questions about Threads based on the study, feel free to ask, and I can provide relevant information from the study.

Yours truly: Okay if we rank what you call “brand loyalty” between Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, which comes in first, second and third?

The PDF: Based on the findings from the study, the brand loyalty among migrating users across Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads can be ranked as follows:

Mastodon: The study found that Mastodon had the highest level of expressed loyalty among its migrating users, with 37% of migrants expressing loyalty towards Mastodon , .
Bluesky: Bluesky had a lower level of expressed loyalty compared to Mastodon, with 13% of migrants expressing loyalty towards Bluesky .
Threads: Threads had the lowest level of expressed loyalty among the three platforms, with 5% of migrants expressing loyalty towards Threads .

These findings indicate that Mastodon had the highest brand loyalty among migrating users, followed by Bluesky and Threads.

Yours truly: So Twitter ranks last. Even behind Threads..

The PDF: Yes**.

Yours truly: And yet the majority of these people also kept their accounts active on Twitter. They didn’t really “migrate” so much as just added another platform.

The PDF: That’s a valid point. The study did find that many migrating users maintained active accounts on Twitter even after migrating to other platforms, indicating that their migration may have involved adding another platform rather than completely abandoning Twitter. This behavior suggests that while users may have shown interest in exploring alternative platforms, they continued to engage with Twitter, indicating a multi-platform usage pattern rather than a complete migration away from Twitter.

Yours truly: Yet they would prefer Threads over Twitter. If this was a boxing match, in which Threads represented Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter represented Elon Musk, then Mark beat Elon, didn’t he?

The PDF: It’s important to note that the study did not compare Threads and Twitter in terms of overall user satisfaction or preference. The study focused on migration patterns and brand loyalty among migrating users. While the study did find that migrating users expressed a higher level of loyalty towards Threads compared to Twitter, it’s difficult to draw a direct comparison between the two platforms in terms of overall user satisfaction or preference. Additionally, it’s important to consider that user preferences and behaviors can be influenced by a variety of factors beyond just the features and functionality of the platforms themselves.

Yours truly: But Mark would definitely beat Elon in a fight.

The PDF: