Elon Musk’s X is facing user decline in daily active users, finds report

Analysts have indicated the number of daily users on X is falling, more than a year after Elon Musk acquired the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Since the rebranding, there have been a lot of changes in the social network. In a move geared toward an ambition of delivering an app for everything, Musk has been instrumental in the arrival of a subscription service, including a change to the verification system. Audio calls have been introduced, whilst the Tesla billionaire’s Grok AI tool has also been made available to premium users.

NBC News outlined the findings of two research firms, as well as reports from X, on user numbers. The former presents a detailed breakdown of falling figures but the social media giant has responded in a bullish manner, suggesting that its performance stacks up.

As of February this year, X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app in the United States, a reduction of 18% from the previous 12 months, found research from Sensor Tower, a San Francisco-based market intelligence company.

It has indicated US user numbers have been flat or falling every month since November 2022, which was also the first full month of Musk’s ownership. Over the full period of his custodianship up until February, Sensor Towers presented a drop in user levels of 23%.

Globally, the bigger picture is almost as bad with daily active users on the mobile app reducing to 174 million in February, down 15% on the year before, said Sensor Tower.

Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at the firm provided further insight on the research report.

Conversely, rival social media platforms reported modest gains in their worldwide user bases over the same period, with Snapchat enjoying an increase of 8.8%, Instagram up 5.3%, Facebook increasing their share by 1.5% and TikTok seeing a nominal gain of 0.5%.

All of the above apps experienced drops in their US user numbers but none to the extent of the steep decline of X.

Yousef stated it had “the most material decline in active users compared to its peers,” adding “this decline in X mobile app active users may have been driven by user frustration over flagrant content, general platform technical issues, and the growing threat of short-form video platforms.”

In defense of its credentials, X published a defiant post on Monday casting doubt on the figures presented by Sensor Tower. It claimed the worldwide user base is higher than what was indicated with 250 million individuals using the service daily, across the world.

You’re absolutely right @XNews. 250 million people use X every day. 550 million people visit the global town square every month.

On average, users spend 30 minutes a day on X. https://t.co/RoEX4RzIxL pic.twitter.com/L9mkoWll44

— Data (@XData) March 18, 2024

Elon Musk had indicated in 2022 around the time of his takeover, Twitter had around 258 million “monetizable daily active users,” reflecting the company’s metric at the time.

Another important finding from Sensor Tower was that 75 of the top 100 US advertisers had departed X since October 2022, taking their spending elsewhere. Late last year, Musk told advertisers at a conference in New York to “Go f*** yourself,” amid claims of blackmail after he was caught up in a furor around antisemitism.

Image credit: Ideogram

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