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The number of Twitter users is “tanking” following the release of rival app Threads, according to the head of an internet services company. Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince shared a graph showing an apparent decline in Twitter’s popularity following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social network late last year, with a steep drop appearing at the start of July when tech rival Mark Zuckerberg launched his text-based app. Separate figures from data intelligence platform Similarweb showed that traffic to Twitter was down 5 per cent in the first two full days that Threads was available, compared with the previous week, while user retention has also declined. In a report on the trend, Similarweb noted that the drop in user retention is “a bad sign for app user loyalty” for Twitter. The metric only accounts for people visiting Twitter’s website and not those using the app, with other measures suggesting the number of daily active users steadily increased in the nine months following Mr Musk’s takeover. Twitter does not publish up-to-date user data and did not respond to a request from The Independent for the latest figures. The launch of Threads last Thursday saw a record number of users flock to the app in its first few days, with Mr Zuckerberg revealing that the app had reached 100 million sign ups on Monday. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” the Meta boss posted on Threads. “Can’t believe it’s only been five days!” Recent estimates published by Statista put the number of monthly active Twitter users at around 436 million. The arrival of Threads comes at a difficult time for Twitter, with Mr Musk recently announcing a limit to the number of tweets users can view after issues with data harvesting on the platform. Twitter has threatened to sue Threads’ parent company Meta, claiming former Twitter staff were hired to create a “copycat” platform. “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Mr Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote in a letter to Mr Zuckerberg, as reported by Semafor. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.” The Independent has reached out to Mr Spiro for further information about any potential legal action. Read More Musk, Zuckerberg and the bitter battle for the future of social media Account tracking Elon Musk’s jet is now on Threads after Twitter suspended it Elon Musk says ‘Zuck is cuck’ as Threads inches closer to 100m users Instagram’s boss has said it will fix some glaring issues with Threads

Astronomers believe they might have found the source of the brightest explosion ever in space. The record-breaking explosion recorded in October 2022 was the most powerful ever seen, leaving equipment and instruments struggling to measure it as it pointed directly at planet Earth. The bright gamma-ray burst is officially called GRB 221009A and when it first went off, scientists were left scrabbling to point telescopes in its direction to record it. The explosion has affectionately been nicknamed BOAT, standing for “brightest of all time”, and was caused by the death of a large star located 2.4 billion light-years away – relatively close in terms of space activity. The star collapsed into a black hole after ejecting its outer envelope, causing this huge, bright explosion comprised of gamma rays, producing not only a narrow structured jet but with an additional outflow of gas. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter This “exceptionally rare event” surprised astronomers, who had not predicted the existence of gas, and certainly provides plenty of new information around the question of how black holes form. The study’s lead author and astronomer from George Washington University, Brendan O'Connor, explained: “GRB 221009A represents a massive step forward in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts, and demonstrates that the most extreme explosions do not obey the standard physics assumed for garden variety gamma-ray bursts.” He continued: “GRB 221009A might be the equivalent Rosetta stone of long GRBs, forcing us to revise our standard theories of how relativistic outflows are formed in collapsing massive stars.” The huge and long-lasting blast measured up to 18 teraelectronvolts which is a staggering record for a gamma-ray burst, leaving scientists to hypothesise that it was a supernova. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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