He took over Twitter in one of the most public buy-outs of all time, but Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk’s takeover has seen ‘Delete Twitter’ searches skyrocket by nearly 1000 percent.

Over the first weekend of July 2023, Twitter saw some major changes happening. Firstly, Tweets became inaccessible for those not logged on – meaning that Twitter was no longer an accessible platform for those without an account. This move wasn’t announced by the social media platform until it was already being rolled out. Musk claims that it’s a “temporary” move, but five days later – Twitter has much bigger problems.

Less than a day after previewing Tweets or accessing Twitter became impossible for those not using it, Musk announced that users would now have a limitation to Tweets. And that limit was small. Originally announced at 600 Tweets for regular users and 10,000 for premium users, backlash made Musk and his team boost the 600 up to 1000. But, 1000 Tweets is reported to take only 20 minutes to read, heavily limiting users’ time on the platform.

What about advertisers?

The move is a major blow for those businesses still paying for ads on Twitter. For competing platforms TikTok and Instagram, the scroll is endless. But, with curfews, restrictions and drastic changes to Twitter, the advertisers are losing valuable dollars and engagement by the day.

“The joke on Twitter is that people are going to go outside instead, but the reality is that they’re going to go to another app,” says Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. “By sending users elsewhere, Musk is killing the main proposition Twitter has had for advertisers — a highly engaged user base, especially around news and events.”

The limits are “remarkably bad” for users and advertisers already shaken by the “chaos” Musk has brought to the platform, Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said on Sunday.

‘Delete Twitter’ search skyrockets

Among the chaos of advertisers being advised to jump the already sinking ship that is Twitter, the social media platform took another blow when it was revealed that ‘Delete Twitter’ searches hit nearly a 1000 percent increase in the UK. 

For users who missed the announcement that Tweet reading was getting capped, they were apparently confused by the glitching app as ‘Is Twitter down?’ saw a spike of 4173 percent.

What next for Twitter?

First coming into our world in 2006, the original ‘microblogging’ platform might be counting down its final days. Although some are staying true to the platform, Meta’s competitor ‘Threads’ could not be hitting the market at a more apt time, as it plans to go live just shy of a week after Twitter’s biggest hit thus far happens.