Twitter's lost 13% of its daily users and its rebrand has failed

The new data — comprehensive and definitive — should put to rest the countervailing narratives over Musk’s management of the app. Under his stewardship, X’s daily user base has declined from an estimated 140 million users to 121 million, with a widening gap between people who check the app daily vs. monthly. X’s remaining daily users are engaged similarly as before. But the pool is shrinking. Apptopia pulls its data from more than 100,000 apps on iOS and Android, along with publicly available sources.

So apparently it lost only 13% of daily users? Thats a smaller number than I thought. Still bad news for Twitter though.

On the other hand, it shows the power of content creators and niche communities. I used less Twitter but cannot delete it because it is literally how I connect with my niche community on there.

monotrox,

Funnily enough twitter just suddenly got much worse like a couple days ago for me, only pushing blue-check accounts so I might just finally stop using it

SamboT,

You hypothetically showed them.

Sina,

I think it’s embarrassing how low that number is. If there are alien civilizations out there, I think humans would be at the bottom of the barrel intelligence wise.

Honytawk,

It is probably like 50% of the users, the other 74% are bots that are still on the platform. lol

arc,

I still use Twitter but I think honestly that I could live without it and I reckon most other people could too. It’s just force of habit more than anything else. Mastodon, or Threads, or Blue Sky would all be quite happy to pick up the slack. I actually use Mastodon too but I wish the news media would produce feeds for it rather than rely on mirrors.

The place has become a cesspool tbh and with no moderation it only gets worse with each passing day. Blue ticks actually pay to elevate their moronic hate views above others so more moderate and normal voices get drowned out. Musk is mulling charging everyone money to “combat bots” (bullshit), and mulling pulling out of the EU because of their pesky requirements about moderation. I wish he’d do all this stuff and bring the whole thing crashing down.

TWeaK,

Just you wait until elections really kick off, then you’ll really see how shit it is.

Reality_Suit,

I’m convinced that muskrat did this to destroy a channel of communication. It sure helped me look for more free and open source alternatives. I never used Twitter other than seeing live on the spot events.

Lesrid,

Saudi monarchy and other rich folks probably encouraged him further.

mctoasterson,

I am 100% off social media now. Was never a big fan of Twitter but I’m definitely not paying for it. Zuckbook has been deleted for a decade. When Reddit disabled 3rd party apps, that was the last time I used Reddit.

I miss some of the timely news on specific topics but otherwise nothing’s lost.

CanadaPlus,

So what’s the consensus here? Does social media not include things where people use usernames, or do Reddit and maybe even Lemmy count?

mctoasterson,

I should have said with the exception of Lemmy. Not sure I’m getting enough value to continue using it either honestly.

dan,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

Reddit and Lemmy are definitely social media. A subreddit or Lemmy community is effectively the same idea as a Facebook group, just with pseudonyms.

anachronist,

The quantifiably different thing about lemmy is nobody is trying to trap you in a skinner box.

Rambi,

I mean it kind of ends up being a Skinner box anyway just because of the loop of scrolling, seeing a post, looking at it and repeating. But I agree nobody is actively trying to trap you in one.

snowe,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

Social media has always excluded forum like sites. It most definitely does not include anonymous sites. Social media has a strict definition about having connections to people, none of which Reddit nor lemmy has. Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them, that’s not social media, that’s an email list. If lemmy is social media then so is every single comment section on every news site ever.

dan, (edited )
@dan@upvote.au avatar

Social media has always excluded forum like sites.

So are you saying that Facebook Groups aren’t social media either? That’s a forum like site. Tumblr isn’t social media either?

This is Merriam-Webster’s definition of social media:

forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)

This is Cambridge’s:

websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet using a computer or cell phone

Lemmy and Reddit both fall under these definitions.

Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them,

Not sure what you mean by this… Reddit has had chats and PMs for a long time.

It most definitely does not include anonymous sites

Neither Lemmy nor Reddit are anonymous. They’re pseudonymous. Something like 4chan where you don’t even need an account is anonymous.

snowe,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

So are you saying that Facebook Groups aren’t social media either? That’s a forum like site. Tumblr isn’t social media either?

Correct, facebook groups is not facebook. It’s forum software hosted at the same url as facebook. Same as Facebook Marketplace. Marketplace is not facebook. It’s craigslist. It just happens to be hosted at the same url as facebook. Just like StackOverflow Chat is not question and answer software even though it’s literally hosted at the same url. Just like your phone is not social media even though you both create communities on it and communicate with people on it. If you don’t understand how servers work behind the scenes then maybe that doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, but a url is nothing more than a sign to put on the front of your building. You can then teleport the user to anywhere else in the universe and it can have absolutely nothing to do with the original location at all. This is the framework of the internet.

Lemmy and Reddit both fall under these definitions.

literally every single website on the entire planet meet those definitions.

Not sure what you mean by this… Reddit has had chats and PMs for a long time.

You cannot interact with your followers. I didn’t say anything about communicating with individuals that you see around the site. You have no way to know who your followers are you have no way to message your followers. You have no way to interact with your followers. Reddit is a forum software, exactly like every forum software before it.

Neither Lemmy nor Reddit are anonymous. They’re pseudonymous. Something like 4chan where you don’t even need an account is anonymous.

accounts have nothing to do with anonymity, maybe you’re using some layperson’s version of anonymity, but anonymous means it does not require real information. reddit and lemmy are anonymous.

dan,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

literally every single website on the entire planet meet those definitions.

Complain to the dictionaries about it, then :) for now I’m sticking with the dictionary definitions.

but anonymous means it does not require real information

Every post you make on Reddit or Lemmy is tied to your username. There’s only one [email protected] and every post under that username is made by you. That’s why it’s pseudonomous, not anonymous - it forms an identity for you.

An anonymous system would have no way to tell that your posts are by the same person. See something like 4chan. You could post a comment or thread under the name “snowe”, but it’s anonymous because anyone can do that. There’s no way to connect your posts together.

oatscoop,

I view the term “social media” as a continuum and not a box. There are degrees of “social media” with the extreme being sites built around using people’s “real-life” identities.

Honytawk,

Well, social media has a definition. It is any media that allows you to be social. No matter if it is anonymous or not.

14th_cylon,

i am afraid that consensus among general population increasingly is “words mean exactly what you want them to mean at any given moment”. welcome to post-factual age.

CanadaPlus, (edited )

Nah, language has always been in flux. We’re not going to become babbling morons any time soon. I mean, we even have writing now so we can save up a definition to adopt or reject later; that’s fairly new in human history.

What is a bit different is that we have to talk about a lot of things that didn’t exist a generation ago, but that’s only a matter of quantity. Every branch of the Indo-European language family adopted it’s own term for iron when it arrived, for example, so I’m sure we’ll settle on some sort of consistent English terminology for different kinds of platforms. We’re just not there yet, as the replies I got show.

14th_cylon,

yeah, no.

the person who wrote “look at me, i am so cool, i am not using social networks” on a social network didn’t do that because they would be confused by new technology that didn’t exist generation ago, they did that because it worked for narrative they tried to present. and unfortunately it is more and more common and it is not a problem related to technology, just look at any political discussion.

so while what you said is true, it is not very relevant to the discussed problem.

snowe,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

Social media has always excluded forum like sites. It most definitely does not include anonymous sites. Social media has a strict definition about having connections to people, none of which Reddit nor lemmy has. Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them, that’s not social media, that’s an email list. If lemmy is social media then so are every single comment section on every news site ever.

14th_cylon,

Social media has always excluded forum like sites. Social media has a strict definition

social media has never excluded anything. it wouldn’t even be possible, and that is because there is no supreme authority that could issue some strict definition that would be legally binding for everyone 😆

snowe,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

social media didn’t come about until after the advent of facebook so yes, by definition it excludes anything before then. Forum software existed for decades at that point. At no point in time has forum software ever been included in anyone’s social media definition, except it seems like you.

14th_cylon, (edited )

Social media has a strict definition social media didn’t come about until after the advent of facebook so yes, by definition it excludes anything before then.

of course, sweetie. and just out of curiosity, what strict definition from some respectable authority other than you are you working with? 😂

social media, n. Websites and applications which enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.

social media, noun : forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)

long story short, social media is more than facebook.

social media didn’t come about until after the advent of facebook so yes, by definition it excludes anything before then. Forum software existed for decades at that point.

yes, they did. decades before facebook. you just said that. what you probably wanted to say is that the term didn’t come out until… well here is the news for you. the term usually comes after the phenomenon it is describing, not the other way around. it doesn’t work like “hey guys, i have cool term - social media - now we just have to invent some” 🤣

anyone’s social media definition, except it seems like you

nice projection there. have fun.

SNFi,

You can subscribe to news or to Lemmy topics via RSS, you don’t need an account unless you want to reply/comment/post. RSS allows you to subscribe on topic you actually like or want and ignore other stuff. Not having an account can help to be more productive and spend less time talking with others. I have not even a Google account so I can’t neither like or comment on youtube videos or other places that needs an account and I’m totally okay. My only social accounts are this and a Mastodon user I don’t use anymore as RSS is actually how I want to get the news or people opinions/posts.

14th_cylon,

RSS allows you to subscribe on topic you actually like or want and ignore other stuff.

subscription on lemmy allows you the exact same thing. i don’t see how scrolling through your rss reader should be any different from scrolling through the lemmy app.

SNFi,

Because RSS works with an app that manages more RSS from others sites with different configurations you can set plus some filters you can do to that RSS list. So for me, the RSS app gives me more control on what I have read or not from not only Lemmy news (plus some filters I do, a pre-prosessing after fetching the RSS list using Javascript code). And you don’t even need a Lemmy account for that.

OppositeOfOxymoron,

In related news, Twitter is up to 80% nazi billionaire despot disinformation bots now. Congratulations!

GadgeteerZA,
@GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org avatar

Choosing a single letter name was a marketing disaster. Elon is truly clueless when it comes to people and social. Even worse when X implies Ex anything.

anachronist,

Maybe lengthen it to xxx.com? Think anyone owns that one?

krimsonbun,
@krimsonbun@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

definitely not, seems completely original. Go for it elon!

SnipingNinja,

People might confuse it for that Vin Diesel movie I guess, nothing else used 3 xs together like that though.

TheBlue22,

I will not call twitter “x” till the day I die

nickwitha_k, (edited )

I like Xitter, pronounced like xi- in Mandarin Chinese.

curiosityLynx,

For those who want to know, that makes Xitter sound like halfway between Sitter and Shitter.

As an English speaker you can try to make that sound by saying the Y in YEET and paying close attention to how exactly your tongue is positioned and where in your mouth the air is being constricted. Then try to position your tongue as if you want to say “yeet” or “yes” again, but make an S sound at exactly the same constriction point where you made the Y sound before. If you’re successful, it should sound like a hybrid between S and SH to your English ears.

That’s how I make it anyway, actual Mandarin speakers might find issue with my explanation.

nickwitha_k, (edited )

Exactly what I go for. My Mandarin is pretty awful, however.

EpeeGnome,

It’s only ever “the website formerly know as Twitter” to me.

bitcrafter,

One of my current favorite alternative is, “X, the web app you access at twitter.com”, though given the logo that they chose I’m tempted to start referring to them as X11.

biddy,

Elon must have spent so much on x.com yet it still redirects to the primary URL twitter.com

Honytawk,

Probably because if he changed that, then the whole site would break.

And he fired all the people with the experience to make it work again.

sculd,

Agreed. It will be Twitter for me till it die.

blindbunny,

I’ve taken to calling it “xitter”

tesseract,

Somehow, that reminds me of a snowflake dictator who gets annoyed by a cartoon bear and whom the WHO is very afraid of.

Four_lights77,

I don’t think Twitter and Reddit are going to die quickly. They have user bases that they can monetize and bots to flood content. They were shitty enough that enough of left and gave a nice boost to federated platforms. That boost will grow every time those legacy platforms alienate their users by treating them badly. Like windows and Linux.

amju_wolf,
@amju_wolf@pawb.social avatar

It might never truly “die”, but losing 10%+ of active users is massive. Twitter got decimated. Literally.

SnipingNinja,

First time I have seen accurate use of decimate and literally together (not a language prescrivist, just find this funny.)

sculd,

Even Digg is still running!

detalferous,

It’s certain that of the 120 million that remain, a huge number are bots or spam accounts of some kind. They will be there last “users” to quit the platform. And Elon will be happy to collect ad money to show those bots your ads until the very end.

dangblingus,

Nope. Nothing failed. This was Elon’s gambit the entire time. He wanted to tank Twitter. He was never interested in improving it or making it profitable. Why do you think Saudi Arabia gave him 22B to buy it?

wlsnt,

Ah yes, the good old 5d chess. Why would he do that

scrubbles,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

The theory is that he secretly has shorted Twitter somehow. Which I could see, but it’d take an immense amount of planning that no one has picked up on. So, I’ll just continue watching the dumpster fire

SmashingSquid,

He can’t short twitter, when he bought it he took it private.

Test_Tickles,

Elon is not playing 5d chess. He can’t even play 1d connect the dots. The Saudi’s have good reasons to save his ass though. By enabling him to buy Twitter, at best they get control of a worldwide propaganda platform, at worst they only spent 22Billion to kill a universally known communication platform that is a thorn in every totalitarian regime in the world. In addition, they gain they some control over the richest man in the US.

Thisfox,

Because he is throwing a tantrum. The toy he bought won’t do what he wants, and people won’t play with him, so he is breaking the toy. It isn’t a rational decision, it is a tantrum.

MagicShel,

Your position is that a wealthy man deliberately burned 22 billion dollars to destroy microblogging? That he’s intelligent enough to plan and execute this perfectly, but too dumb to think of a better way to spend 22 billion on himself?

I think this theory falls apart on examination, to say nothing of Occam’s Razor which argues heavily in favor of sheer incompetence.

ultratiem,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

This paints Elon like a calculated intellectual that carefully weighs his decisions and has a great team around him. When in reality, he’s a petulant, ego maniac that is far more swayed by his mercurial emotions than reason and intellect. His many prepubescent tantrums over the years is evidence of that.

Money doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make you a genius because you used your status to con someone out of it. If you don’t know how the tech works, Elon sounds like a fucking genius. A visionary. But if you are in the field, you’ll realize that his promises (living on Mars, brain chips, etc.) are just fiction.

MagicShel,

I’m not sure from the tone of your post whether you are trying to agree or disagree with my conclusion because it reads slightly argumentative, but I assure you I agree with you 100% and think this supports my point perfectly so maybe I’m misreading the tone. I upvoted you either way for being right in your points whether you come to the same conclusion as me or not.

Actaeon,

He burned 22 billion because he was forced to after being a doofus. He is not destroying microblogging, he is destroying the environment around microblogging on his platform. It is his new toy that was never worth what he paid for it, so there is little point (to him) in trying to recoup monetary value. It’s value is to him is being his personal playground.

blusterydayve26,

This wouldn’t be the first time it happened: Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media

whofearsthenight,

Obviously, to ruin the world and complete his turn into a Bond villain, he needed to tank the 5th most popular social media site, which has been proven over and over to have less influence than anyone thinks.

localhost443,

The most obvious explanation to me is that following so much success running pump and dump scams on his followers in some stocks but mostly unregulated crypto, he decided he was untouchable. Then tried to run another such scheme on twitter stock, but this time threw in a legally binding contract into the manipulation because he’s too dumb to realise how dumb he is.

He got so used to fucking around, he thought he’d never have to find out…

Honytawk,

Well the banks that invested 13 Billion in the take over will not like that if it were true and will sue him.

Elon Musk: slams dick in car door

Musk Fans: Masterful gambit, sir!

lemillionsocks,
@lemillionsocks@beehaw.org avatar

Im reminded of this short diddy youtu.be/9ywnLQywz74

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

Can’t you just follow them via one of the mirror instances like bird.makeup?

Thisfox,

Interesting.

Every time I follow a twitter/X link it asks me to log in to read it. Which I cannot do as I never bothered to get one. Is there a way to read those links without an account?

rglullis,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

bird.makeup is fediverse server software. it creates mirror accounts from twitter users, which means that you can follow twitter accounts from Mastodon (or CalcKey, Pleroma, etc).

You can also just use something like nitter.net to follow and browsing Twitter without an account.

Thisfox,

I don’t have any intention to follow anything, I just want to follow the occasional twitter link.

ijeff,
@ijeff@lemdro.id avatar

A must have browser extension to avoid accidentally adding to their traffic volume: github.com/SimonBrazell/nitter-redirect

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

you can use libredirect to include other backends too: libredirect.github.io

Foni,

Only 13%?? With everything he’s going through, it seems very little to me. I think that the turning point would be top-level institutions and politicians changing Mastodon, I think that as long as that does not happen Twitter will still be relevant unfortunately

jsdz,

13% may not sound like a lot, but it includes almost all of the 10% who weren’t complete idiots.

erez,
@erez@programming.dev avatar

So I guess you’re still using it?

janguv,

Considering they said almost all, that’s not the gotcha you think it is.

gyrfalcon,
@gyrfalcon@beehaw.org avatar

Hey, this comment reads like you’re just dunking on another user. If that is not what you meant to do, please try to communicate more clearly, and if that is what you meant to do, please refrain while commenting on Beehaw in order to be(e) nice. Thanks!

Pyr_Pressure,

That’s just the 13% who have stopped using it daily I imagine, who were already probably super addicted to it.

Not sure if weekly/monthly users dropping out would be included in that tally. Also it says nothing about activity time from the daily users. It’s possible the users that stuck around may not be using it as much i.e. 1-2 tweets or comments a day now vs 10-20 before.

sure,

That’s just the 13% who have stopped using it daily I imagine, who were already probably super addicted to it.

It’s the opposite. As per the article, daily users remained consistent while monthly users saw the 13% drop.

HKayn,
@HKayn@dormi.zone avatar

it is literally how I connect with my niche community on there

And that’s why it’s only 13%

dawa,

And he’s not alone.

I’m on tech Twitter and trying to switch to Mastodon. Unfortunately, the latest news and top content are still on Twitter and I don’t want to be missing out on either of those.

nix, (edited )

A real transition will happen in bursts. I’d love to see stats by interest categories, because I suspect what happens is enough prominent people in some community move at to bring the rest with them, but until that happens there’s no budge.

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