Okay, I know that Elon Musk fans are going to hate me for this, because sharing anything other than praise for Elon and X means that you’re against free speech, and truth, and freedom in general, or whatever the case may be.
But the fact is that Elon and Co., deliberately or not, continue to push false narratives about the relative success of X, which, if anything, is steadily losing ground in the broader social media space.
Over the past week, Elon has once again amplified misleading reports that X is both beating Meta’s apps in usage, and that X is “the number one news app”.
That’s not to say that these claims are entirely untrue, but the framing of them is disingenuous, at best.
So first off, on this one (which was re-posted by Musk):
This is based on data from SimilarWeb, a platform that measures web traffic and provides insight into how different sites are performing. And therein lies the creative license, in that these figures are measuring web traffic only, so this is only a measure of visits to x.com on a web browser. These figures do not include app usage.
Why is that so significant? Because according to X’s own reported user data, approximately 88.55% of X users log into the app via a mobile device.
So of X’s reported 250 million daily active users, only 29 million of them are logging in via the website. As such, this usage chart is only measuring the usage of a fraction of X’s user base. In terms of overall usage, X is nowhere near Facebook or IG.
To clarify, Facebook has more than 2 billion daily active users, with the vast majority of them only ever accessing the app on mobile, while an even higher percentage of IG users, which has close to a billion daily actives of its own, only log into the platform via mobile device. In raw numbers, Facebook has 8x the daily user count of X, while IG has 4x X’s DAU number.
As such, this data is only measuring a fraction of each app’s usage. So if more people are logging into the X website than Instagram.com, that’s only comparing, essentially, 12% of X’s users against around 5% of IGs.
Which is not really indicative of anything.
But then again, it’s still something, right? The fact that X is seeing more desktop users log in than those on Facebook and IG is still significant, especially considering that last October, SimilarWeb reported that X had seen a 14% decline in mobile and web visits since September 2022.
Well, I do have some questions about this chart:
Part of the increase in traffic to x.com is due to the switchover from twitter.com, which has boosted its numbers a lot. But to double its traffic between May and June?
Regardless, the bottom line is that X is clearly not beating Facebook or Instagram in overall usage, and that the framing of these claims is questionable. Which raises queries about all of the data X shares.
Including this:
Yes, X leads the App Store charts for “News” apps, but that‘s because it’s not actually a “News” app at all, and when you look at who it’s competing against in this category, it’s really no surprise that a social media platforms is winning in that race.
So why is X listed as a “News” app?
Because back in 2016, after several quarters of slowing growth (while Facebook and Instagram were booming) Twitter management were under increasing pressure to turn things around in order to capitalize on the app’s perceived opportunity. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey eventually came up with a genius plan to shift its growth narrative: What if Twitter changed its categorization to the “News” category in the App Store instead, shifting it out of the “Social Media” segment, which it was never going to win?
Twitter does have a lot of news content, and a lot of news publishers posting to it. It’s kind of a news app. Right?
Since then, Twitter/X has been listed in the “News” section on the Apple App Store, and since then, for eight years, it’s been the number one “News” app. There’s been no recent change in this, X is not rising in the News charts, it’s leading this category because it’s not a news app, it’s a social platform, and in fact, it can’t be listed in the “News” category on the Google Play Store because it’s reliant on user-generated material.
Which means that it’s not a “News” app.
So every time you see Elon and his supporters touting X as the leading “News” app in France, Venezuela, basically every region where Elon raises concerns about their leadership:
Know that Twitter/X is always the top News app. Because it’s not a news app, and should not be measured against smaller apps that have a fraction of its usage.
Which, again, raises questions about Elon’s measurement methods, and the data he highlights to his 200 million followers. Because it’s misleading, and projects a false interpretation about the app’s success.
Here’s the truth: X hasn’t added any daily active users since November 2022, when it first reported reaching 250 million DAU. That’s 20 months of no usage growth. X has reported an increase in monthly active users, rising from 500 million monthly users in March 2023, to 570 million now. So it is, apparently, seeing some increased interest, but adding 70 million new monthly users in 17 months is also not indicative of significant rising interest.
But then again, X has also claimed to have tackled bots, which would have seen it cull millions of profiles as well, and maybe, in doing so, there has been higher growth than the raw figures would suggest.
Which is why Elon is keen to tout “daily user seconds” instead as a key measure of engagement and activity.
On that front, X recently reported that in Q2, it was serving 361.9 billion daily user seconds on average, which equates to 24 minutes per day, per user in the app. Which is a reduction on the 30 minutes per user/per day that X claimed in March.
In addition, reports have also shown that X’s revenue is down around 50% on 2023 at this stage of the year.
So on balance, X is not going great. Which could be fine for Elon and Co., as they may view that as the cost of “upholding free speech”, or whatever it is they think is happening. But the point here is that Elon continues to amplify misleading stats about the platform’s performance, which, on deeper analysis, do not live up to the promises they claim.
I mean, people are going to see what they want to see anyway, I guess, but as a point of clarification, such claims are not entirely accurate summations of X’s current status.
