Data from two research firms and figures published by Musk and X suggest a deteriorating situation for X by some metrics. Musk has marketed it as the world’s “town square,” but in number of users it continues to lag far behind social media rivals that focus on video, such as Instagram and TikTok.
In February, X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app in the U.S., down 18% from a year earlier, according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm based in San Francisco. The U.S. user base has been flat or down every month since November 2022, the first full month of Musk’s owning the app, and in total it’s down 23% since then, Sensor Tower said.
I used to be really active on Twitter. Everyone was there: my friends, people in my industry, people involved in my hobbies. When Musk bought it out everyone left. I tried to follow them to Bluesky and Mastodon but they mostly just quit posting. Between that and Reddit falling apart I don’t often use social media anymore.
Yeah. Same. I moved to Mastodon, and then ended up getting my invite to Bluesky (two weeks before it opened to everyone…thanks Jack Dorsey…real helpful…). But no one is there. Mastodon has mostly tech and open source. Bluesky is…well…nothing that I can tell.
Unquestionably the winner of Twitter’s fall was TikTok, when suddenly everyone including politicians started making accounts/posts. Which is likely a large part of the push to get it banned in the US. Because it’s taking away users/advertisers from good ol’ 'murican tech businesses owned by south african diamond mine nepo babies.
I’m actually glad to see what’s been happening to Twitter because as much as it was started with good intentions and used to be a positive force for tech, it was also fundamentally flawed social media model. The basic problem was that only positive reactions were allowed - like, retweet, follow. This is NOT the town square, where you can get any reaction. It’s more akin to a dictator’s rally, where you’re only allowed to clap and booing is not allowed. So it’s no surprise that over time, it led to filter bubbles and the spread of mass delusions. Because you could say the craziest or most depraved thing, and all you’d hear is applause.
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Yeah I think if anything twitter is a lesson in how even if you try to give users only positive ways to interact they will find ways to use them to interact negatively. Whether that be quote retweeting or ratioing.
Or using a laugh react as a thumbs down.
A laugh react is more insidious than a thumbs down.
My point was that a laugh react is meant to be a positive interaction (what you said was funny, and I enjoyed your contribution) but has been co-opted as a negative reaction (I’m laughing at what a willfully ignorant idiot you are) because FB only wanted to provide users with positive ways to react. My concern wasn’t the level of negativity, only to provide the person to whom I was replying with a other example.
I think that was clear, my further comment was to highlight how far off (maybe), FB’s implementation intent has been from the way people are now using it.
Yes, in a joke or funny post the laugh emoji is used as intended. But in a more serious announcement it is the equivalent of mocking disgust, hence more emotionally devastating than a thumbs down.
Eg say someone posts a somber poem about their late father - a laughing emoji is saying “fuck you, I laugh at your pain or your shitty poem or the memory of your dad”.
The only question is, why, now that they’ve seen how it’s used don’t they let people disallow certain reactions. I’m assuming because emotional distress is more addictive…
What’s “ratioing”
Yup. That’s actually a problem when people dog pile on someone with a valid point.
Well said, I think that is the best explanation I have ever heard on the sites flaws.
I’m not sure which platform (fb, Twitter, YouTube???) it was, but it did count “unfollow” or “block user/block channel/block post” as negative feedback, limiting future reach of this person’s posts to other users of the platform.
Yeah I’ve always thought of it as a “build your own cult” toolkit. On Twitter you too can try your hand at being a cult leader with followers that agree with everything you say.
Good. Come to mastodon.
Edit: wtf is bluesky?
Weird. I’ve never seen Twitter more hostile to visitors and potential new users. And if you happen to register to a new account you will be welcomed by even more hostility from trolls and seasoned users. It’s just a terrible experience.
Elon was right when he said history will remember who killed Twitter, but we disagree on who
People acting as if twitter is something important. And killing it is meaningful. In Europe we don’t use it. Literally. I’m Polish, I never had a twitter account and don’t know anybody who has. The whole twitter/musk debacle is a war over nothing.
American here. Never used twitter. Never pay attention to it.
That’s what happens when you cater to Nazis
That you lose only 18% of your users?
I mean that’s millions of people, that’s not nothing
“The platform struggles to attract and keep users”: why should I give up my data to an alt-right platform owned by a billionaire?
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For Twitter I’m apparently also a turbo user, as I get loading errors every day, after opening a few tabs quickly. Then it takes a while before I’m unblocked. Before Elon bought Twitter this never happened.
Eh I’ve been reading this headline forever.
Call me when it’s Myspace.
Of course engagement is down, nobody wants to post anymore when most replies are spambot nonsense and cheech and chong gummies ads. It is still the best place for breaking sports news and my feed is highly curated to only see what I want.
Twitter is even more cringe than LinkedIn, which is saying something.
I need someone to tell me why Musk won’t be a huge buyer of DWAC when it opens. How much of Truth Social would he need to get it merged with Twitter, which would get Trump back on the platform. Musk gets to help out the psycho conservative right and he gets to help himself.
It would get attention, but can that attention be translated into ad revenue? So it doesn’t really help Musk out, and would be a bad move. So it seems like a stupid thing to do. So he’ll probably do it.
Trump is a meta-generator; there are articles critical of the articles critical of his coverage. Anyone could sell ads under a Trump tweet. How many real people joined Truth Social just to follow Trump, and more just to be able to see what the orange bastard spewed? There’s a reason pre-Musk Twitter bent over backwards to keep the shit-flinging orangutan on their platform.
If Musk does nothing, Twitter dies in a slow spiral. He has to do something. What better way than to get a guy who people can’t stop paying attention to, a frontrunner in an election season? The man gets clicks. If he’s already dropped $44B on Twitter, what’s another billion or two to save its life while simultaneously propping up his political choice, triggering the libs, and writing the loss off of his taxes?
Imagine Trump posts something about “killing immigrant vermin” and there’s a Nike swish with the slogan “Just Do It” beside it.
How much money do you think advertisers will pay when this is a possibility?
You’re thinking solely in terms of getting attention. And yeah no doubt Trump being on Twitter would get attention. The question is how do you turn that attention into revenue?
If he’s already dropped $44B on Twitter, what’s another billion or two to save its life while simultaneously propping up his political choice, triggering the libs, and writing the loss off of his taxes?
You’ve jumped to the conclusion that this will save Twitter. The problem is that this will get attention (which actually costs money in bandwidth) without a clear way to make money off of it. So he’d be spending billions on something that would not get him back into the good graces of advertisers and probably cement the inevitable destruction of twitter, not save it.
Like I say, it’s Elon Musk so the fact that it’s a bad move means he might actually do it.
It’s turned into such a cesspool of right wing nut jobs and musk groupies. Huge echo chamber.
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