Social media group X has suffered a slowdown in user growth as its owner Elon Musk divides audiences. Photo / 123RF
Social media group X has suffered a slowdown in user growth as its owner Elon Musk divides audiences. Photo / 123RF
X has been hit by stalling user growth as the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk divides audiences and it faces new competition from the rise of Meta’s rival platform Threads.
In previously unreleased figures, X said its number of global daily active users in the second quarter of thisyear was 251 million, a rise of 1.6 per cent from the same period the year before.
This contrasts with the double-digit growth experienced in the years leading up to the acquisition by Musk, who took the listed company private for US$44 billion (NZ$71.8b) in October 2022.
Musk has proved a divisive leader of X, which he rebranded from Twitter shortly after the takeover.
The group has shed advertisers since his takeover, due partly to his stance as a “free speech absolutist” and his decision to remove most of the platform’s content moderators.
Critics argue this has led to a more toxic experience but Musk claimed “drastic action” was needed to stem mounting financial losses.
The platform is also facing new competition for attention.
Facebook owner Meta launched rival platform Threads a year ago in a challenge to X. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed Threads had grown to 175m monthly active users, compared with the 600m claimed by X.
However, analytics company Sensor Tower estimates Threads has only 38m daily users – those who open the app at least once a day – suggesting most are using it less frequently than other social media platforms.
Threads attracted an initial surge in interest when it debuted last July. It became the fastest-growing app yet, with 100m signing up in its first week. However, it was widely written off when usage cratered shortly after.
Zuckerberg admitted in a February earnings call that it was one of the company’s products that had “[blown] up before we’re ready for them to”.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Photo / Getty Images
The platform has steadily added users since the northern autumn, buoyed by its expansion into the European Union in December and celebrity sign-ups such as Taylor Swift, who joined in April. It also benefited from promoting posts on sister app Instagram, which provided about two-thirds of its web traffic, said analytics company Similarweb.
Meta had deployed its existing moderation teams to Threads and made a commitment not to amplify news or political content on the platform, in an attempt to avoid the “scrutiny, negativity ... or integrity risks”, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram and Threads, said last year.
A recent survey by British communications regulator Ofcom found 17 per cent of UK adults used X as a news source. However, engagement on the platform had been sliding during national election campaigns in the US, UK and France, Similarweb data showed.
X rejected the Similarweb figures, saying its monthly users increased significantly in the US and UK between August last year and June this year, without providing specific figures.
