Twitter CEO Elon Musk is currently disturbed about why Tweet engagements on the bird’s app is dropping.
In fact, Elon Musk is also affected and has since launched investigations looking for solutions to the problem.
Days back, @elonmusk had complained that his tweets were no longer getting much engagements on Twitter.
Equally, his high-profile far-right accounts that he interacts with have also been complaining that their tweets are no longer getting much engagements despite having millions of followers.
I also know that you too who are a user of the bird’s app have been witnessing poor tweet engagements lately.
So, what exactly is the problem? Why are accounts with millions and thousands of followers suddenly getting poor tweet engagements?
Well, below are 12 reasons you and @elonmusk are getting poor engagements on Twitter.
In this report, you will fined the following reasons:
- View Count Causing drop in tweets engagements:
- Likes and Retweet buttons’ size reduction:
- Many People stopped using Twitter
- Disappearing Tweet Mentions:
- Random tweets from accounts you don’t follow popping up:
- Sacked Employees Deleted Codes on Twitter backend:
- Musk sacked important engineers handling specialised duties that make Twitter run smoothly:
- Rampant and random changes and deadlines for implementation and no long-term plans:
- Work Perks erased by Musk:
- Slack, Twitter’s open discourse platform now a “ghost town.”
- Employees are scared of Musk; You could be fired for giving wrong answer:
- Twitter Blue re-launch led to brand impersonation and brands fleeing platform:
Meanwhile, note that the Twitter CEO has reportedly sacked the engineer responsible for seeing that your Tweets get commensurate engagements.
Here is the gist!
Elon Musk has over 100 million followers on Twitter but his tweets gets just few engagements.
“This is ridiculous!” shouted Musk at a team of advisors. But Musk is not the only one experiencing tanking of their tweets’ engagements.
Well, Musk has some secrets to reveal to you about your poor twitter engagements.
Elon Musk has fired the engineer responsible for making sure your Twitter engagements do not drop.
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In the recent days, @elonmusk has been concerned about why his tweets are not getting the much engagements they ought to.
Equally worried were Elon Musk’s friends and other prominent accounts that Elon interacts with who also complained that their tweets are no longer getting the need engagements.
Musk Investigates:
Faced with the complaints, Elon had, last week, assembled a team of engineers in his office to unravel why people’s tweets, including his, are no longer getting the needed engagements.
The Tesla CEO said to his advisor, “This is ridiculous.”
“I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”
Meanwhile, before assembling the experts, Musk had tweeted complaining that his tweets were getting fewer engagements.
He had also proceeded to make his account private for a whole day in order to detect what was wrong.
He wanted to know why his Twitter engagements were dropping fast.
“Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones.”
Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2023
His investigation did show that there was an issue with the social media platform involving twitter engagements.
@elonmusk admitted in a follow-up tweet saying:
“This helped identify some issues with the system. Should be addressed by next week.”
This helped identify some issues with the system. Should be addressed by next week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2023
What the engineers and Advisors told Musk:
One of the solutions that one of the Engineers told Musk was that ever since he bought the bird’s app for $44 billion, many users no longer have interest in his antics on Twitter.
Recall that before Elon Musk bought the platform, many users would latch on his tweets which, most times, sound amusing.
But since his takeover of Twitter, the billionaire has attracted haters who may no longer be interested in his tweets, the Engineer told him.
Showing him his ranking on Google trends, the Engineers said while Elon Musk’s tweets’ were at “peak” of “100” in April of 2022, now, his tweet ranking has dropped to just a sorrowing “nine.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk Is not Satisfied: “You’re fired!”
However, despite the explanation, Musk will not accept that. So, miffed by that, he fired the engineer responsible for seeing that Tweets get need engagements.
Recall that Musk had, seven weeks ago, announced Twitter had introduced the “public view counts” on users’ tweets.
The feature allows users see how many views their tweets have.
The tech billionaire had said that the feature would show to investors and users how viable the platform is.
“Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.”
But Why are users’ tweets’ engagements dropping?
View Count Causing drop in tweets engagements:
Well, reports have said that the Public View Count feature introduced may have been one of the main causes of poor tweet endearments.
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Ever since the feature was introduced, it has rather shown how poorly tweets get engagements.
Likes and Retweet buttons’ size reduction:
For instance, Twitter reduced the sizes of the “Like” and “Retweet” buttons to accommodate the Views.
This may have, played down the importance of the buttons in the minds of users who may now, subconsciously, not see it so cool to like or retweet tweets.
Other Causes of Twitter Engagements Dropping:
Many people stopped using Twitter:
Many users have stopped using Twitter. Ever since Musk took over the platform, many people stopped using the app.
Among their complaints are that the platform encouraged hate speech and other forms of violence.
ALSO READ: Celebrities Who’ve Stopped Using Twitter Since Elon Musk’s Takeover
Others also deactivated their Twitter accounts because Musk reinstated the accounts of suspended persons like former US president, Donald Trump whom many users hated.
Disappearing Tweet Mentions:
Also, lately, mentions on peoples’ tweets suddenly started disappearing.
What it means is that when someone mentions your tweet in their own tweet, it disappears as people no longer get to see and interact with it.
Before now, when someone mentions your tweet, other tweeps get to see and engage with your tweet even if they are not following you.
But that feature seems to have issues lately as mentioned tweets now disappear without other tweeps getting to engage with it.
This is obviously another major reason for the drops in tweets’ engagements, including those of Musk.
Random tweets from accounts you don’t follow popping up:
Another reason for the drop in tweet engagements despite the huge followership base an account has is because the app suddenly inserts random unconnected tweets from accounts you don’t even follow.
Imagine following a trending hashtag of specific discussion and suddenly, you begin to see tweets about unrelated discourse.
For instance, you are scrolling down a trending hashtag about Corona Virus and suddenly, tweets about war in Ukraine keep popping up.
This makes users irritated and can make them not to engage with a tweet, thereby reducing the engagement on tweets.
Sacked Employees Deleted Codes on Twitter backend:
Two days ago, precisely Wednesday, Twitter hit a problem as users could not tweet further because the app told them they had gotten to their daily tweet limit.
“You are over the daily limit for sending tweets,” the app told tweeps.
However, it turned out that the problem popped up because a former employee, before finally leaving the company, deleted some codes at Twitter backend that now tells users they had gotten to their daily tweet limit.
This is really not cool! The employee had deleted data for an internal service that sets rate limits for using Twitter.
This can be said of other employees too, even though their the timer to the havoc they may have set on the platform may not have started ticking yet.
This clearly shows a deliberate plan by disgruntled sacked employees to run down the platform.
According to current employees, Twitter is full of chaos right now.
“As the adage goes, ‘you ship your org chart.’”
“It’s chaos here right now, so we’re shipping chaos.”
Musk sacked important engineers handling specialised duties that make Twitter run smoothly:
Similar to the immediate reason mentioned above is the sacking of the wrong employees by Musk.
Upon taking over the platform, Elon had sacked thousands of engineers at Twitter, among whom are very specialised and important employees who are strategic to the smooth running of the platform.
Because the engineers have been sacked, the dedicated routines that they did to ensure Twitter works smoothly are undone.
This is further affecting the bird’s app’s smooth operation and hence, users are getting more dissatisfied in using the app.
According to a current employee in a chat with The Verge, the employees currently working as fillers for the sacked engineers “…have to become code archaeologists to dig through the repo and figure out what’s going on.”
The employee who said Twitter CEO Elon Musk believes he knows everything in tech, advised him.
He said that the CEO should cool down, stop sacking and allow those who know the job to do their work.
“If Elon can learn how to put a bit more thought into some of the decisions, and fire from the hip a bit less, it might do some good.”
“He needs to learn the areas where he just does not know things and let those that do know take over.”
“He really doesn’t like to believe that there is anything in technology that he doesn’t know, and that’s frustrating.”
“You can’t be the smartest person in the room about everything, all the time.”
Meanwhile, this raises fears whether or not Musk is ever going to even regain his $44 billion dollar investment in the platform, much less making profit.
Rampant and random changes and deadlines for implementation and no long-term plans:
Also, the current employees at Twitter say the working environment is chaotic. This is because, they are getting random orders from Musk and with short deadlines to implement changes on the app.
According to the employees, they are preoccupied with meeting the deadlines.
This is even as they said that the company lacks long-term sustenance plans.
“We haven’t seen much in the way of longer term, cogent strategy.”
“Most of our time is dedicated to three main areas: putting out fires (mostly caused by firing the wrong people and trying to recover from that), performing impossible tasks, and ‘improving efficiency’ without clear guidelines of what the expected end results are. We mostly move from dumpster fire to dumpster fire, from my perspective.”
Another employee said, “There’s times he’s just awake late at night and says all sorts of things that don’t make sense.”
“And then he’ll come to us and be like, ‘this one person says they can’t do this one thing on the platform,’ and then we have to run around chasing some outlier use case for one person. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Work Perks Erased by Twitter CEO Elon Musk:
One of the attractions an employment has for employees is the perks the workers get. Twitter had many of such perks for employees, among which were free food.
However, since Elon Musk took over, no more free food! In fact, employees now have to pay for food if they want it.
Also, the employees complain that the food vendors are providing poor service for pay at Twitter.
“Sucks — and now we have to pay for it.
“And, I know this sounds petty, but they appear to have obtained the absolute worst coffee vendors on earth,” an employee has said.
Slack, Twitter’s open discourse platform now a “ghost town.”
Before Elon took over Twitter, employees would discuss issues contributorily on Slack. Everyone would want to say something and the meeting platform was like a very busy city.
However, ever since Musk took over, Slack has become a “ghost Town” as employees won’t interact as the case was before.
Employees now have taken their discussions to their private groups on WhatApp and Signal instead of on Slack for Twitter.
Describing the current state, an employee said thus Slack for Twitter is now a “ghost town.”
“People don’t even chat about work things anymore. It’s just heartbreaking.”
“I have more conversations with my colleagues on Signal and WhatsApp than I do on Slack.
“Before the transition, it was not uncommon in the team channel to talk about what everybody did that weekend. There’s none of that anymore.”
Employees are scared of Musk; You could be fired for giving wrong answer:
On Slack and other channels, employees are scared of what constitutes the correct answer to Musk.
When Twitter CEO Elon Musk asks them questions, they are torn between giving the right or safe answer.
You could give a wrong answer and the next thing you get is ,”You’re fired!”
“When you’re asked a question, you run it through your head and say ‘what is the least fireable response I can have to this right now?’” one employee explained.
Though the employee adds that “There are a handful of true believers that are obviously just ass-kissers and brown-nosers who are trying to take advantage of the clear vacuum that exists.”
So, this has made the current employees scared of Musk.
Since this has become the case, it would be wise that Elon Musk appoint a manager to manage the platform while he retires to a board member.
That way, employees can be open and not work with fear of being sacked any minute.
Twitter Blue re-launch led to brand impersonation and brands fleeing platform:
Another reason that could also be partially attributed to poor engagements is the Twitter Blue re-launch.
Employees revealed that the re-launch of the Twitter Blue led to many brands fleeing the platform because their accounts were impersonated.
So, as brands fled the platform, the number of users reduced and hence, engagements.
Double-edged sword in being creative:
Also, employees are scared that being creative is a double-edged sword that could earn you accolades or sack from the company.
They said although one good thing Twitter CEO Elon Musk has brought to the company is freedom to be creative, however, that is a double-edged sword.
“In the past, Twitter operated too often by committees that went nowhere.”
“I do appreciate the fact that if you want to do something that you think will improve something, you generally have license to do it.
“But that’s a double edged sword — moving that fast can lead to unintended consequences.”
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