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

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A VTuber's performance at a mini-concert has gone viral on TikTok and turned into its own meme after reportedly charging $300 to punters who saw the gig. According to YouTube, the performance took place at the Cosplay Arts Festival in Thailand on July 1st. This was reportedly part of the Algorhythm Project performance, which is a collective of Virtual YouTubers (Vtubers) who all perform under the same banner. For those not in the know, a vtuber is basically a YouTuber who uses a virtual reality avatar instead of themselves as part of the entertainment on their streams, which often involve singing. The particular vtuber who has gone viral on TikTok in the last few days is called Dacapo who has 230,000 subscribers on YouTube alone. They performed as part of the Algorhythm Project video and while there were numerous other vtubers in the piece has focused in on Dacapo's performance which can be viewed below. 【#ARPxCAF Mini-Concert Replay】Shinunoga E-Wa 「Dacapo」 www.youtube.com The video consists of not much more than Dacapo singing the song 'Shinunoga E-Wa' as the avatar sways back and forth with their long fringe covering the character's eyes. Toward the end of the song, the hair does lift up and viewers do get to see the character's eyes which appears to prompt a huge reaction from the crowd. @edgebum #vtuber #vtubers #vtuberconcert #viral #fyp #funny Numerous TikTok's have since emerged of this performance with many claiming that people at the festival paid $300 to watch the show. @rashawn531 Woke up to this #vtuber #rashawn531 However, this is likely to be $300 in Thai Bhat which roughly exchanges to $8.50 (£6.60) in US money, so in reality they didn't spend too much money. Regardless the vtuber's video has since gone viral and become something of a meme on TikTok where people imitate the song. @jcmyep #foryou #fyp #foryoupage #vtuber#concert#vtuberconcert Dacapo is yet to respond to their new found online fame. 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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