There’s been a lot of discussion post-election about a “mass exodus” of users from X, with reportedly record numbers of people deactivating their X accounts.
But is that true? Is X really losing millions of users everyday, putting it on a fast track to irrelevance?
Well, maybe. The truth is, nobody knows, other than those working for X, and they’re not likely to be sharing any bad news about the app. And they don’t have to, because X is no longer a publicly listed company, as Twitter had been, which means that it’s under no obligation to share anything about its performance, at least not to the general public.
And while there are some external indicators that X is losing audience, they’re not definitive, and you’d be taking a fairly big leap to presume that they mean that X is on the way out.
Because it’s likely not, at least not yet.
For example, one of the most quoted reports on X usage has been this one from Similarweb, which shows that more than 115,000 U.S. web visitors deactivated their X accounts on Election Day.
That’s not a big surprise, as political division in the U.S. has heightened concerns, and thus, turned more people away from Elon Musk’s social media project. But the data here is very incomplete, because Similarweb is only able to track website traffic, which, in this specific case, means visits to the account cancelation page on x.com. Similarweb doesn’t have data on activity within the X app, and given that more than 88% of X usage occurs within the mobile app, making any assumption based on just a fraction of its overall usage is just that, an assumption.
That might well be indicative of a broader trend, but we don’t know, because it’s only a minor element of X’s overall usage.
There are other indicators, like Bluesky seeing a surge in users over the past week, and a rising number of academics, many with big followings, shutting down their X accounts. There are also anecdotal indicators, with a heap of users on Threads and Bluesky announcing that they’ve deleted their X accounts.
So there does seem to be something of a shift away from Musk’s X project. But to suggest that it’s a significant change is, again, assuming a fair bit.
Because at the same time, X itself continues to tout record high usage, and there are also suggestions that more people, and advertisers, are reconsidering the platform in the wake of Trump’s victory. There’s something to be said for the fact that the poll numbers reflected a lot of what X’s hive mind has been saying, which could indicate that more people are actually in alignment with Musk and X than many analysts had expected.
So X might actually be in a better position than many reports suggest, but again, we don’t know because X staff are the only ones with access to the real data, and they’re saying it’s all good.
X usage is at an all-time high and continues to surge.
To all of our users — of every interest, political party, and point of view — You will always have a place to engage and join the global conversation freely and safely.
Legacy gatekeepers are yesterday’s “news.” ????
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) November 13, 2024
Don’t get me wrong, X’s staff have consistently promoted exaggerated and cherry-picked data in the past, so I’m not suggesting that we take them at their word either. But again, the bottom line is we don’t know, though given that X saw such a surge in usage during the election, that suggests that the platform is still playing a significant role in disseminating info in real time And there’s not really a replacement for that as yet.
Data from Pew Research suggests the same, that there’s been a more recent shift away from X, but it’s not as pronounced as you might expect.
This is based on a survey conducted before the election, but even so, you can see that the expected shift away from X hasn’t been a seismic shift.
What we do know, based on X’s own data, is that X is losing users in Europe, with its logged in user numbers dropping by around a million people throughout 2024. Its logged out guest numbers have declined by a lot more than that, and if you were view this as an indicative trend, then we can again assume that X is losing attention everywhere.
Though not in a significant way. And again, only X can really tell us, and it hasn’t provided an official update on its active user counts since March, when it reported 250 million daily actives, and June, when it claimed 570 million monthly users.
X hasn’t added to its daily active user count for two years, so it’s clearly not seeing a major upswing either, though its monthly active user count has increased by 70 million over the past year. Given that X also implemented restrictions on what logged-out users can see, that makes sense, but it also doesn’t suggest any major growth or interest.
But it doesn’t indicate the former either, and I would contend that while many people are spending less time on the app, a lot of people are still checking in on X, because it remains the best app for breaking news updates for many sectors and communities.
It’s also worth noting that we used to have more insight on this, not just based on Twitter’s quarterly updates, but also from researchers who had access to the Twitter API. That enabled tracking of things like account deactivations at scale, but Elon and Co. have now priced most of these folk out of the market, in order to keep X posts away from AI developers.
But on balance, I can tell you that X isn’t dying, at least not yet. And while Elon Musk has President-Election Donald Trump’s ear, I would anticipate that it will remain relevant for some time.
You may not like it, but the truth is that X is still providing value for many millions of people.
