On the first anniversary of Musk's entry into Twitter, what kind of report card did he hand over?

Source: Wall Street Journal

Compiled: Bitui BitpushNews Mary Liu

A year ago, Elon Musk officially acquired Twitter and dropped his rhetoric, promising to turn the social media platform into an "all-inclusive app" that would give the company a beautiful turnaround since its founding in 2006. A year later, however, most of Musk's grand vision has not come to fruition.

According to third-party data, Twitter struggles on a number of metrics, including attracting users. Revenue fell sharply after the acquisition as the company tried to rebuild its advertising business, however the platform has also been dealing with the challenge of content moderation after Musk relaxed such rules.

Musk defended Twitter's trajectory, recently saying the company is "growing fast."

The number of users has shrunk – but there are still quite a few people using it

Musk said X is booming, and in August he posted that the platform had set a record for "active users per second" in recent months. The company said in September that its daily active users were 245 million, down from the 259.4 million figure Musk shared in November 2022, but higher than the 237.8 million figure disclosed by Twitter at the time for the second quarter of 2022, which was the last public submission of financial results before Musk took him private.

Third-party data is less optimistic. According to an analysis by research firm Sensor Tower, daily active users through mobile apps fell 16% in X September compared to the month Musk took office.

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Changes in daily active users of apps around the world since October 2022

However, the skinny camel is bigger than the horse. Although some emerging social media platforms are trying to establish themselves as alternatives to Musk's platform, many users are still used to using X. According to Sensor Tower's analysis, interest surged after Meta's Threads launched in July, but the number of users is still far less than X.

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Downloads drop after rebranding

Apptopia's analysis shows that after Musk completed the acquisition, Twitter's demand increased, and the number of new users who downloaded the app also increased. More recently, Musk abruptly rebranded the platform to X in July, causing downloads to drop. Tom Grant, vice president of research at Apptopia, said people searching for "Twitter" don't necessarily know that the app has changed its name to X.

X says it's gaining momentum, reporting its own data this month showing 1.5 million people signing up for X every day, up 4% from last year.

! [Musk's first anniversary of Twitter, what kind of report card did he hand over?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-f4338563f4-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

! [Musk's first anniversary of Twitter, what kind of report card did he hand over?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-54857ed558-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

X daily global app downloads

Layoffs

Musk laid off workers on a massive scale, and many employees were laid off or voluntarily left, but the site continued to operate as usual. Current and former employees said the remaining engineers were "stressed," and some users praised Musk's management style, but many complained of more technical bugs lately (and technical issues before Musk took over).

! [Musk's first anniversary of Twitter, what kind of report card did he hand over?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-19e2ca608d-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

Number of employees of X

Note: The data in Twitter files is for full-time employees. The figures provided by Musk are approximate.

Source: Company (number of Twitter employees); Elon Musk (calculated December 2022 and April 2023)

Try to appease advertisers

X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino began to paint a more positive outlook for the business, saying last month that 90 percent of last year's top 100 advertisers were back. Advertising provides most of the company's revenue, although X has also been working to increase revenue for other parts of the business like subscriptions.

Other metrics, especially the U.S. advertising market, have unsatisfactory revenues. Many large agency executives say they haven't seen a massive return of brands, and some are returning, but with much less advertising dollars. Musk said last month that X's advertising revenue in the U.S. has fallen 60 percent since the acquisition.

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Ad spend across U.S. platforms was a year-over-year quarter

Investor withdrawal

According to Musk's own account, the company's valuation had fallen to about $20 billion as of March, though he also expressed optimism, telling employees in March that Twitter at the time "could be seen as an inverse startup," which he expected to one day be worth more than $250 billion, and laid out ambitions to expand X beyond social media to areas such as digital banking.

Several asset managers wrote down their investments substantially. Cathie Wood of ARK Investment Management said in July that she is bullish on the platform's long-term prospects! [Musk's first anniversary of Twitter, what kind of report card did he hand over?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-32c3a6cd9f-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

Since October 2022, the holdings of several major companies in X Holdings Corp. have changed

Who posts more? Answer: Elon Musk

! [Musk's first anniversary of Twitter, what kind of report card did he hand over?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-49458007c8-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

@elonmusk posts, retweets and replies on X, monthly data

One of the high-profile users who posts more on X than before is Musk himself.

Since the acquisition of the company, the billionaire and those users who have used it frequently have become more active. Musk became the biggest V with the most fans on the platform, and his posts often sparked controversy among users and advertisers. Earlier this year, Musk told employees that his posts deserved more popularity, and engineers tweaked the code of the recommendation system to recommend his tweets to all users except for blocking.