Twitter Alternatives. Apps That Gain Popularity And Their Impact on SEO

Why are we discussing alternatives to Twitter?

It’s hard to imagine anyone interested in digital marketing who hasn’t noticed the buzz around the X platform – formerly known as Twitter – following its acquisition by Elon Musk. While the actions he has taken can be judged in different ways, we can all rather unanimously agree that they have stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Much could be written about the rebranding itself, as it was an extremely bold, not to say audacious, step. After all, Twitter is a globally known brand that has left a deep mark on the world of digital media – the platform is used by politicians, big business figures or notable artists. Global corporations use it for marketing campaigns and the coinage “to tweet”, associated with microblogging, has made its way into our everyday discourse.

As we’ve mentioned before, the actions of the new owner can be judged differently, but increasing criticism of the billionaire and changes to the way the portal operates (less emphasis on content moderation) are beginning to alienate some individuals and companies that were previously happy to advertise on the platform or use it to stay in touch with their followers. Since Musk took over the platform, X’s advertising revenue has plummeted by more than $5 billion. What’s more, well-known brands and institutions, including luxury fashion brand Balenciaga, US retailers Best Buy and Target, and media outlets such as The Guardian and NPR, have begun to abandon the platform.

So, we have a gap that needs to be filled. It didn’t take long for Meta to create its portal counterpart, Threads. A decentralised community network for microblogging, Mastodon, is also expanding, and that’s not all! Bluesky, which emerged from Twitter’s internal 2019 project and has become independent of the current X, is also gaining momentum.

The question remains: will alternatives to Twitter be able to become equally popular or even outdo the giant? How can you check the potential of X’s competitors? Fortunately, as web performance specialists, we have a few proven methods to analyze and compare key indicators.

The best Twitter alternatives that are gaining popularity

Just a quick mention of platform X’s main competitors isn’t enough to come to any conclusions – below, you’ll find more details about each of the Twitter alternatives we talked about.

Mastodon

Mastodon is a decentralised social network based on the ActivityPub protocol. Instead of one central site, Mastodon consists of multiple independent servers (known as instances) that can interact and communicate with each other. Each instance has its own moderation rules and community. It’s an open-source project, so anyone can contribute to developing it or create their own server.

Does this social media platform have a chance to defeat Twitter? The rise of its brand recognition when Twitter was facing image losses, as well as numerous mentions on technology or digital media sites certainly brought Mastodon a lot of publicity, but at this point, it’s a far more hermetic creation than a popular social network.

Bluesky

Bluesky is an initiative launched by Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter. It was originally a Twitter’s internal project that aimed to create a decentralised protocol (the AT protocol) that would give users more control over their data and how they interact on social media.

Alongside Jack Dorsey, former Twitter employees are also involved in the project, considerably increasing its development potential. Until recently, you could only join the platform on the recommendation of other users, but now anyone can create an account on Bluesky. Like Mastodon, Bluesky is aiming for a distributed content and community management model that gives users more control. The platform is currently niche, but Jack Dorsey’s name and the media hype surrounding the new community project may act as a catalyst for faster growth in the future. To get as close to Twitter as possible in terms of organic results, Bluesky needs to attract a much larger user base and build an ecosystem of integration with external tools – the AT Protocol is intended to make it easier to transfer accounts and data between different social services. Bluesky is gaining popularity mainly among developers who want to explore the possibility of creating their own applications based on the protocol.

Threads

Threads is a microblogging platform developed by Meta, the creators of Facebook, and it’s tightly integrated with Instagram. Instagram users can set up a Threads account with a single click, transferring their profile info, contacts, and more. According to official Meta data, Threads hit over 100 million registered accounts within just 5 days of its launch in July 2023, breaking records for the fastest growth among social media apps.

At first glance, Threads seems like the biggest threat to Musk’s platform, thanks to Meta’s massive user base. But that doesn’t mean it’s all smooth sailing. For instance, in its early days, Threads lacked proper indexing in search engines (some content wasn’t visible outside the app at all). Despite the initial explosion in user numbers, Threads engagement levels began to dip after a few weeks. On top of that, enthusiasm of European users quickly declined due to limited availability in the EU during the early stages, thanks to legal and regulatory problems related to personal data.

Why competing with Twitter is a truly uphill battle

Let’s dive deeper and explore why Twitter alternatives really have their work cut out for them.

User growth and recognition

The value of a social media platform depends on its user base – the more people join, the more content there is, which in turn attracts even more users. But in the early stages of a platform’s development, when users are scarce, drawing in newcomers can be a real challenge. After all, no one wants to join an “empty” network. Platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky struggled with this for a long time, as niche players rarely thrive in what’s meant to be mass-oriented social media – unless they offer unique benefits (like no censorship, open-source code, or enhanced privacy).

This is precisely why Threads took the pole position among Twitter alternatives – Meta tapped into Instagram’s massive user base from the start, allowing people to seamlessly carry over their profiles and followers. This move instantly brought millions of accounts to Threads. Meanwhile, platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky are growing at a slower pace, relying on grassroots community efforts and organic user growth – a process that takes significantly longer.

The massive power of Twitter/X’s domain and brand

Even after its rebranding, Jack Dorsey’s creation – now under Elon Musk’s ownership – still enjoys global recognition. For millions around the world, it’s the go-to platform for following real-time news, political opinions, and celebrity updates. Its long-standing presence in the market and consistent media coverage have cemented its role as a hub for social media marketing. Even when Twitter faces PR crises, many users stick around out of habit or because of their established networks. Moreover, countless TV stations, news portals, and media outlets actively integrate Twitter into their content – embedding tweets in articles or reporting on “what’s happening on Twitter” about a given topic.

From a more technical perspective, the domain authority of twitter.com ranks among the highest on the internet. Twitter links consistently appear near the top of search engine results, and the platform itself serves as a valuable source of traffic and mentions for external content. We’ve already covered the strong connection between Twitter and SEO on our blog, so if you missed the article, be sure to give it a read.

Resources and background

This is where the big players clearly shine. Threads is owned by Meta – a giant with access to vast resources, cutting-edge infrastructure, and top-tier marketing and PR experts. This gives the platform the ability to roll out new features quickly, launch massive campaigns, and expand almost anywhere in the world. In contrast, nonprofit platforms like Mastodon or early-stage projects like Bluesky struggle to compete with tech giants that offer advanced content-personalization algorithms and the sheer scale of promotion that only deep pockets can buy.

Twitter vs. alternative platforms through SEO lenses

Enough theory – let’s see how the industry giant stacks up against its competitors in practice. To evaluate this, we’ll turn to Ahrefs, a tool that helps to analyze:

• The visibility of Twitter/X compared to its alternatives
• Organic traffic for each of the mentioned sites
• The number of linking domains and individual backlinks pointing to these platforms
• Trends for each of these metrics over time

We’ll be working with hard data that’s impossible to dispute – data that can tell us a lot about the current “battle” between microblogging platforms and help us draw concrete conclusions.

What challenges do Twitter alternatives face? The power of x.com and twitter.com domains

A quick glance at the data from Ahrefs makes it clear (even to a less experienced SEO specialist or analyst) that we’re dealing with a true giant. Just take a look at the traffic and visibility metrics for the x.com domain:

Impressive, isn’t it? It’s not every day you come across websites where traffic is measured in the hundreds of millions and visibility in the tens of millions. Interestingly, tools like Ahrefs don’t provide data on the number of backlinks and referring domains for x.com, but we can safely assume those figures would also be massive. Many of us regularly browse news articles on established outlets, where links to X/Twitter posts are abundant – especially in content referencing statements from politicians, celebrities, and other public figures. Considering the platform’s global reach, the volume is astonishing.

We see a similar situation with the old domain, twitter.com, which has been redirecting users to x.com since May 2024:

Here, we can draw an interesting conclusion. Even though Twitter’s rebranding took place in July 2023, and there’s a noticeable drop in both visibility and traffic, the x.com domain still hasn’t quite managed to surpass the new iteration of the platform in many areas. According to Ahrefs’ estimates, current organic traffic for x.com is just 30%, and the domain’s visibility is only 50% of what twitter.com was able to achieve. The decline in Twitter’s value after its acquisition by the new owner seems to align with these figures.

It would certainly be insightful to compare other historical data and look at the peak performance of the old domain versus the current state of the platform. However, when we check it using SEO tools, we see the following:

Something’s missing here, right? However, the data still speaks for itself – X remains an enormous website with performance metrics that SEO specialists managing large sites and their owners could only dream of (and likely do dream about). Looking at the decline compared to the old version of the platform, we could venture a theory that the drop in visibility for the new domain is a result of the gradual rise of new Twitter alternatives “siphoning off” some of its traffic. So, how do the stats look for these competitors?

Twitter alternatives in SEO tools

A key date in our analysis should be the previously mentioned July 23, 2023. We can therefore hypothesize that this is when we’ll see the biggest spike in traffic for Twitter alternatives. However, it’s important to keep in mind that Threads officially launched about two weeks earlier, and Bluesky has only recently become available to a wider audience.

Mastodon is a decentralized platform, so we might not get the full picture from just the main domain, as a lot of user activity happens on other instances of the platform. That said, it’s clear that even though Mastodon has been around since 2016, user interest really picked up after Musk finalized the Twitter acquisition. Since then, organic traffic and visibility for Mastodon in search results have been on the rise. Still, these numbers aren’t even close to what Twitter/X is pulling in – the original platform outperforms it by a huge margin.

You can clearly see the moment when Bluesky stopped being an exclusive platform and became available to a wider audience. Time will tell how the platform develops from here, especially since, despite its later start, some of its metrics are already outperforming Mastodon. That said, these numbers are still a far cry from the multi-million-strong reach of Twitter.

Finally, we have Meta’s alternative – Threads. It’s a clear example of how a massive backing and capital from such a powerhouse can be the key to catching up with the giant. None of the previously mentioned Twitter alternatives have managed to reach the same level of metrics and user engagement – once again, we’re talking about traffic and visibility measured in the millions.

But will that be enough to go head-to-head with Twitter and compete for dominance in the microblogging space? If you’re cheering for the other platforms, unfortunately, even with Meta’s support, it’s still just a fraction of what Musk’s platform has achieved.

Twitter alternatives vs. SEO – key takeaways

The competitors of X face a tough challenge. While their user bases, visibility, and traffic are growing, they still lag far behind Twitter’s massive reach and achievements. The main takeaway is clear: the vast capital, established reputation, and ingrained user habits are decisive factors that smaller platforms and Twitter alternatives simply can’t match at this point.

Despite the drop in Twitter’s value, the exodus of brands, and users disagreeing with Musk’s philosophy or the changes he’s introduced, it’s hard to imagine any other platform dethroning Twitter in the near future. Though, as we’ve seen in the world of social media, revolutions do happen. Time will tell if any of the platforms we’ve discussed today will grow into a giant and become one of those game-changers.