X Acquired by Musk Sees Continuous Decline in User Numbers

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is reported to have a continuously declining number of users on the social networking service X (formerly Twitter) that he owns.

According to global app market analytics firm Sensor Tower on the 23rd (local time), the average daily active users of X's mobile app in the United States in February was 27 million. This represents an 18% decrease compared to the same period a year ago and a 23% drop compared to November 2022, shortly after Musk acquired X.

원본보기 아이콘

Previously, in October 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion (approximately 58.5 trillion KRW). From that point on, Twitter was considered a completely different company.

After Musk's acquisition, Twitter was renamed X, underwent large-scale layoffs of employees, and introduced new revenue models, but its management status did not improve. On the contrary, DAU (daily active users) decreased by 16% alone while competing social media platforms all saw increases, and the company's valuation plummeted by 72% (according to Fidelity's assessment). This was because users left due to dissatisfaction with Musk personally or X's social media policies.

원본보기 아이콘

Sensor Tower revealed that the global number of users showed a monthly decline except for a slight increase immediately after Musk's acquisition in October 2022. This contrasts with the global user growth of competing SNS platforms during the same period. Snapchat increased by 8.8%, Instagram by 5.3%, Facebook by 1.5%, and TikTok by 0.5% respectively.

Yousef Abe, Senior Insight Analyst at Sensor Tower, analyzed, “X has seen a significant decrease in active users compared to competitors,” adding, “This could be due to disappointment with explicit content, general platform technical issues, and increased threats from short video platforms.”

In fact, Threads, launched by Meta, Facebook's parent company, in July last year as a rival to X, had 1.6 million daily mobile users in the US and 14 million globally in February. This is less than one-tenth of X's daily user count. However, according to market intelligence firm Apptopia, Threads' app downloads are significantly outpacing X.

Apptopia reported that in February in the US, for every one download of the X app, Threads was downloaded 16 times. Tom Grant, Vice President of Research at Apptopia, said, "While X had an overwhelming market share in app downloads for microblogging platforms, the situation has completely changed since the launch of Threads."

Meanwhile, X is also showing efforts to overcome its slump through new business strategies. In November last year, Musk integrated Grok, a chatbot service launched by his AI company xAI, with X.

In January this year, X introduced voice and video call features for its paid subscribers. Musk even hinted, “I will eliminate phone numbers and make calls only through X.” This relates to Musk's past vision of an ‘everything app,’ and there is analysis suggesting that X is likely to incorporate financial services such as stocks and cryptocurrency, as well as sports and shopping services.

© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.