Update: Parler has filed a lawsuit against Amazon Web Services [AWS]
These are the latest Alexa scores published on 1/11/21. The individual country scores are a 30-day rolling average and the worldwide scores are a 90-day rolling average. All of these sites have seen extremely dramatic movements in their 30-day USA rolling average in the past few days.
Currently, Parler is down after being de-platformed by Jef Bezo’s Amazon Web Services [AWS]. Google, Apple, and Amazon all announced that they were de-platforming Parler within 24 hours of each other. A move that critics call a blatant antitrust violation because the largest tech companies appear to be colluding with each other to ban their competition.
It remains to be seen how fast Parler is brought back online.
MeWe and Gab appear to be struggling to keep their sites running as they are bombarded with new users.
Parler: 180 USA, 505 Canada, 541 Australia, 576 Mexico, 848 Worldwide
Rumble: 397 USA, 1807 Worldwide
BitChute: 205 United Kingdom, 325 Germany, 347 Canada, 520 USA, 1,344 Worldwide
TheDonald: 404 USA, 2,301 Worldwide
MeWe: 154 Hong Kong, 692 USA, 970 Taiwan, 2,339 Worldwide
Gab: 677 USA, 3,637 USA
Parler’s USA score:
1/8: 317
1/9: 257
1/10: 216
1/11: 180
In order for Parler to move their 30 day rolling average from 317 to 180 in four days, they would have needed a massive amount of traffic. Keep in mind that as the score improves, the increase in traffic is not linear, it is exponential. A site ranked 200, would not be getting double the traffic as a site ranked 400. It would be getting something in the range of five to ten times the traffic.
Currently, Alexa ranks Twitter as the 30th most popular site in the USA and the 45th in the world. America is, by far, the most important market for Twitter financially. The US market is where the lion’s share of its advertising revenue comes from. Ad revenue declined during the US lockdown because many kinds of businesses were forced to close. Then, many advertisers paused ads on Twitter during the nationwide BLM/Antifa rioting as the atmosphere on Twitter continued to become more and more caustic. Major companies like Coca-Cola and Starbucks announced thirty-day pauses in social media ads across the board. Many saw Twitter as the single most polarizing factor in American society and the primary platform where riots and violence were being organized and encouraged.
If Parler strips away more than ten percent of Parler’s American users, it would severely increase Twitter’s difficultly to maintain US ad revenue. Tik Tok has also sucked away the youth market from Twitter, as teenagers increasingly view the site as uncool and want to use the latest trendiest new thing.
Twitter’s stock opened Monday morning at 9% below Friday’s close. Many retail investors are vowing to ditch the stock. Twitter’s stock hit a new all-time high on December 16th as tech stocks, in general, surged for weeks.
It is important to remember just how fast MySpace collapsed.
In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million. At the time, it was the biggest social media website in the world.
In 2006, MySpace traffic exceeded that of Google, and the $580 million purchase price was seen as a bargain. However, MySpace began increasing the number of intrusive ads after signing a three-year deal with Google for syndicated ads. MySpace also began dramatically increasing the amount of censorship and the site was widely accused of disproportionately censoring conservatives.
Traffic to MySpace fell so fast and so dramatically that a group of investors led by pop star Justine Timberlake purchased the site in 2011 for a whopping $35 million. A mere 6% of the 2005 purchase price.
