ELon Musk, who acquired Twitter last month, suggested the platform was the biggest source of referrals.
Elon Musk's latest claim that Twitter is the massive driver of clicks to other websites on the internet has been widely opposed and mocked by several users, including a former employee of the social media company.
Mr Musk, who acquired Twitter last month, suggested the platform was the biggest source of referrals.
"Twitter drives a massive number of clicks to other websites/apps. Biggest click driver on the Internet by far," he said in response to an exchange indicating how Twitter "drives so few clicks".
Twitter drives a massive number of clicks to other websites/apps. Biggest click driver on the Internet by far.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022
Claire Diaz-Ortiz, a former Twitter employee, rubbished the billionaire's claim as "100 per cent false".
"Lies. I worked at Twitter 5 yrs + wrote 2 books on social media mktg. this is 100% FALSE & Twitter knows it. We never sold it on clicks, bc it is much lower on traffic than FB, LI, etc. Twitter has other key strengths. (& mrkting is way more than clicks;) (sic)," she tweeted.
lies. i worked @twitter 5 yrs + wrote 2 books on social media mktg. this is 💯 FALSE & @twitter knows it. we never sold it on clicks, bc it is much lower on traffic than FB, LI, etc. twitter has other key strengths. (& mrkting is way more than clicks;) https://t.co/ie3ZZT3q7E
— Claire Díaz-Ortiz (@Claire) November 13, 2022
Another user, Tom Coates -a product developer - dismissed Mr Musk's statement as "embarrassingly wrong".
Here's just the list for social media from Statcounter for example. This is *just* social media sites. Twitter isn't even 10% of them! pic.twitter.com/W1RWkUNTL8
— Tom Coates (@tomcoates) November 13, 2022
"100% wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. I mean even if you ignore the search engines it's wrong. I can feel your ad execs and partnerships people (if there are any left) shrivelling up the more you type," he wrote on Twitter.
He even shared a study which showed that at 74.1 per cent, Facebook was far and away the leading generator of traffic to other websites, much ahead as compared to Twitter's 7.73 per cent.
Elon Musk, who has been looking for ways to make Twitter profitable, on Thursday raised the possibility of the social media platform going bankrupt, two weeks after buying it for $44 billion.
He also warned that Twitter would not be able to "survive the upcoming economic downturn" if it fails to boost subscription revenue to offset falling advertising income, as per reports/
After taking over on October 27, Mr Musk moved to clean house and has said the company was losing more than $4 million a day, largely because advertisers started fleeing once he took over.
Twitter has $13 billion in debt after the deal and faces interest payments totaling close to $1.2 billion in the next 12 months. The payments exceed Twitter's most recently disclosed cash flow, which amounted to $1.1 billion as of the end of June.
He also began charging $8 a month for the Twitter Blue service which will include a blue check verification before pausing it on Friday. It will probably "come back end of next week", he said today.
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
