The Shrinking of X: Elon Musk's Troubled Social Saga

The Gist

User decline. X lost 13% of its daily active users since Elon Musk's takeover.
Rebrand fallout. Negative app reviews surged 2,000% after rebranding from Twitter to X.
Power users. Top 10% of users account for 72% of all time spent on the app.

X — formerly Twitter — is shrinking meaningfully under Elon Musk, according to new data from mobile research firm Apptopia.

Musk's X Sees 13% User Decline

Since Musk bought the company in October 2022, it’s lost approximately 13% of its app’s daily active users. And its rebrand from Twitter to X accelerated the decline, per data that Big Technology first published. Meta’s Threads, meanwhile, isn’t taking advantage, with stagnant engagement and little meaningful migration from Twitter.

The new data 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 app users to 121 million, with a widening gap between people who check it 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.

Musk's X Rebrand Drives User Loss

Musk’s July rebrand of Twitter to X — discarding a troubled but ubiquitous brand — caused the company serious harm. In both August and September, X lost more than 5% of its daily users month over month. This all but negated any positive momentum Musk generated during the takeover.

“After the sudden rebrand, there was a ~2,000% spike in negative daily app reviews,” said Adam Blacker, Apptopia’s director of content and communications. “The keywords ‘logo’ and ‘blue bird’ appeared as top 10 keywords left in user reviews, each with negative sentiments attached to them.”

Data Contradicts Yaccarino's X User Claims

The data contradicts X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s claim in July that X usage is at an all-time high. Though Musk might’ve been correct with a similar statement about record user growth in November 2022. Those users didn’t stick around, however.

Twitter's rebrand failed

X’s remaining daily users are spending a consistent amount of time on the app, signaling it does have staying power among a dedicated core. The average user spends around 15 minutes on the app per day, per Apptopia. Asked to comment, X auto-replied, “busy now, please check back later.”

Twitter users spend 15 minutes on the app each day

Power Users Dominate X App Time

X’s usage continues to be top-heavy, according to the data. Power users — the top 10% — account for 72% of all time spent on the app, slightly more than the 70% they spent inside X in October 2022. This indicates that either a new group of power users replaced those who left or that power users and casual users left in consistent numbers.

Threads Fails to Challenge X

Meta’s July launch of Threads was seen as a potential X killer by some, but the data shows it remains a dud. Threads has climbed the App Store lately, but after commanding more than 20 minutes of daily use from X users at launch, it’s fallen to below five minutes from that group today. Apptopia believes that only about 10% of X users have ever tried Threads. Mark Zuckerberg wants to get Threads to 1 billion users, but returning to 100 million seems like a stretch.

Threads, of course, has shied away from news, discarding a surefire method to gain engagement. Its algorithm regularly surfaces posts from hours, or days, earlier. And so it’s not suited to fast-moving news events. Speeding the app up would likely improve engagement over time, but Meta is reticent to jump back into news after its debacles in the 2010s. Life is simpler without it.

Decline Could Mean the Product Is No Longer Appealing

Musk is starting to charge some users $1 for X’s essential functions, which could open a new window for a competitor. But the decline of X usage without a replacement seems to confirm that the product — or something like it — simply does not appeal to the masses. With options like TikTok for entertainment and online publishers for news, being in the "room" as operatives and partisans yell at each other over breaking information isn’t the draw many imagined. One year after walking into Twitter HQ with a sink, Musk is learning this firsthand.