• Independent research shows that the former Twitter, now X, is losing users at a dramatic rate.
• While social media rivals like Instagram and TikTok have grown somewhat in the last year, X has seen sharp drops.
• Officially, the CEO of X claims the platform has half a billion users monthly and nearly 2 million daily sign ups.

When billionaire Elon Musk overpaid for Twitter in 2022, renamed it X, and changed its algorithm to favour user engagement towards what he likes, including himself, users either hated the new social media platform, or they liked it.

Since then Musk, as the Supreme Overlord of X for Life, then went on a spree of changes, removing old features and adding new ones. His plan, he has said, is to create a WeChat-like super app, where users can communicate to others, read the news, get paid for creating content, find employment, and much more.

It turns out that for these ideas to be potent, you need users and according to independent research, the former Twitter is bleeding those en masse.

Research highlighted by NBC News shows that in February, X had 27 million daily active users on its mobile app in the US, down by 18 percent a year earlier.

This is according to data from the Sensor Tower, a San Francisco-based market intelligence firm. Further, the firm says that the US user base of X has been flat or down every month since November 2022, the month that Musk officially became the owner of the platform.

In fact, since November 2022, the total US userbase of X is down 23 percent. Worldwide figures aren’t the platform’s saving grace either, as daily active users on the X mobile app fell to 174 million in February, down 15 percent from a the same point a year earlier.

Like the US userbase, the worldwide userbase has been down or flat – meaning no growth – since the first month that Musk officially took the blue bird by the neck and brought his sink into the Twitter offices. In contrast, rivals like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok all had modest increases in users since November 2022 worldwide.

In the US, most of these apps experienced declines, but none as pronounced as X. Senior insight analyst at Sensor Tower Abe Yousef said that X had ” the most material decline in active users compared to its peers.”

“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,” he added.

Earlier this month, another study from Edison Research reported that X experienced a 30 percent drop in usage from 2023 to 2024. The study suggests that since Musk took control of the platform, it has seen “a dramatic decrease in the number of people who are using the service in the U.S” and that such a sharp drop year-over-year “is incredibly rare and noteworthy.”

Despite what independent research shows, things are still sunshine and rainbows at the X camp.

According to CEO Linda Yaccarino via a blog post, half a billion people use X worldwide every month and the platform sees 8 billion “active minutes” from users every single day. Finally, the platform sees an average of 1.5 million new sign-ups every day.

The information on sign-ups is especially relevant, as brand-new users on the platform must pay to create an account. Another unpopular decision spun up by Musk in order to start making some money from X, which was somewhat dead in the water in terms of revenues even before he bought it for $44 billion.

[Image – Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash]