Despite Elon Musk’s claims that X is reaching new record highs in usage every other month, and that the app remains a critical connector, the latest data shows that Elon’s X project is losing user interest, sparked, in many cases, by Musk’s own divisive commentary in the app.
According to new insights, X has seen a significant decline in users in both the U.S. and U.K. in recent months, as Musk has continued to double down on his political stances.
Last month, amid reports of race-based riots in the U.K., Musk posted that “civil war is inevitable” in the region, which has seemingly sparked an exodus of U.K. users from the app.
As reported by FT:
“ Data from Similarweb shows active daily users in the UK have dropped from 8mn a year ago to only around 5.6mn now, with more than a third of that fall coming since the summer riots. The same thing is happening elsewhere, and not just in places where the platform has been banned, such as Brazil. Over the same 16-month period, X’s active users in the US have fallen by about a fifth.”
That also aligns with X’s own reporting on its EU user base.
As part of its EU reporting obligations, X needs to provide regular updates on its EU user base, and how many active users it’s serving in the region. In its most recent report, covering the first six months of 2024, X reported a 5% decline in EU users.
So X is losing users in its key markets, and it’s still banned in Brazil, where it also has another 20 million users (though that may be lifted this week). So why does Elon keep saying that X is trending up?
Well, a lot of that is selective reporting.
For example, Elon has repeatedly claimed that X has become the number one news app in several regions. But that’s not true, X/Twitter has been the number one news app in virtually every region since 2016, when Twitter changed the app’s classification from “social media” to “news.”
That’s because most actual news apps have far fewer users comparatively. And because X is a social media app, with (at last report) 250 million daily active users, it ranks better than them, but it’s not a news app, and shouldn’t be classified as such. In fact, it can’t be listed as a news app on the Google Play Store because it’s reliant on UGC.
But either way, the claim that X has suddenly risen to become the number one news app, in any region, is blatantly false.
Elon is now relying on “user seconds” as a key metro to measure X’s performance.
???? usage hit another all-time high yesterday with 417 billion user-seconds globally!
In the US, user-seconds reached 93B, 23% higher than the previous record of 76B.
In a single day.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2024
But as we’ve reported previously, most of these claims also don’t stack up, with X reporting higher usage stats in other measures. I suspect that X’s “active seconds” is only measuring this since the change to X, and not all-time for Twitter as well. But essentially, the numbers don’t really mean much when X is changing the parameters of its reporting.
And again, every third party measurement provider has reported that X is seeing a decline in users. It seems very unlikely that X is actually outperforming their analysis, while the company’s revenue is also in decline.
On balance, it’s fairly safe to assume that Elon’s X project is failing, while additions like its Grok AI chatbot haven’t done much to curb the decline. My assumption would be that X will have to confront its longer term viability at some point, and that could be the end of the entire X project.
Though I also suspect that the outcome of the upcoming U.S. election will have something to do with this. If Trump loses, Elon also loses big time, after lumping all of his hopes onto a Trump victory. Trump’s re-election would give Musk a direct, influential link to the White House, and a means to re-angle policies to benefit his companies, particularly SpaceX, which is often hamstrung by government regulation.
That could also benefit X, and Musk other projects, whereas a Harris win would erase all of these potential gains.
If Trump doesn’t win, I suspect Elon will have to go back to the drawing board on some of his initiatives, and X, based on its performance, may end up being shut down or sold off as a result.
Essentially, Elon’s betting on his own popularity to influence the election, which he’s seeking to do directly via X. But if that fails, I don’t think that app holds the same value to him anymore.
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