University Closes Twitter Account After Embarrassingly Low Engagement

Words by Ethan Manera (he/him) and Niamh Vaughan (she/her)

The iconic year of 2010 treated society with many notable cultural moments: the release of the first ever iPad, Lady Gaga's legendary meat dress, and the Christchurch earthquakes. But perhaps most notably, 2010 saw the birth of Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington’s official Twitter account, @wellingtonuni.

However, the university’s presence on Twitter has seemingly ceased. The account, which amassed an impressive 17k followers, updated their bio earlier this year, stating “this Twitter account has officially closed”, and urging all curious tweeters to visit the university’s website or the notably less popular Twitter account of VUW Research Office, @WgtnUniResearch.

Just last month, Salient reported on the new VUW TikTok account, which offers thirst trap videos of the Vice Chancellor and Pedro Pascal memes. It seems this new social media approach has come at the expense of a Twitter presence. 

To find out more, Salient reached out to the university, with a spokesperson spilling the beans about the mystery. Turns out the Twitter account isn’t quite dead yet. 

Unhappy with the account’s low engagement, “the @wellingtonuni Twitter account will be relaunched [this] week, and will focus on promoting and sharing information about academic research from Te Herenga Waka,” said a university spokesperson. 

In the span of over a year, not a single tweet has garnered more than one comment.

The university was quick to throw their social media team under the bus, citing the change to the account to be “prompted by a drop in engagement on the broad university content that the social media team was sharing”. The relaunched account will now be run by Te Kōhure, the University’s Research Office, with the social media team demoted to a supportive role. 

The university reassures students that whilst the Twitter will cater to academics and professional people “over the age of 24”, the social media team will continue to “invest their time in other social media channels that reach [the] student community, including Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok.”