“Sociable” is the newest commentary on essential social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.
There’s some conflicting information floating around in the intervening time with regard to X’s usage, and its growth (or not) under Elon Musk.
Some reports suggest that X usage is way down, while downloads of the app have also declined. Other reports imply that X is definitely gaining in popularity when put next to its traffic and engagement numbers from last yr.
In times past, we have been in a position to depend on Twitter’s quarterly updates as a method to measure the platform’s actual usage, and since those reports are legally enforceable, we could trust that Twitter was indeed providing its true usage numbers. But X, which is a non-public entity, doesn’t have any such reporting obligations, which leaves us reliant on Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino to offer us with actual current usage insights.
And occurring what they have been reporting up to now, I’m undecided that we’ve got any clue as to what’s actually correct, true, or factual on this front.
So first off, we’ve got Musk himself, who last week shared this chart as an indicator of X’s surging traffic.
Looks compelling right? Based on this chart, you would be led to imagine that X is definitely beating Instagram by way of overall usage.
It isn’t. In fact, it isn’t even close.
Instagram has over a billion monthly energetic users, versus X’s 500 million, so in sheer visitors alone, it’s not possible that X could be matching IG.
But what’s less clear, based on this chart, is what the above figures actually represent.
The numbers on this chart are based on website traffic data from SEMRush, which measures traffic to a site, on this case x.com versus instagram.com. So it’s measuring visitors in browsers (web or mobile), not within the actual apps. 80% of X’s usage comes via the app, while it’s more like 97% of Instagram’s. In other words, only a fraction of the users of either app is coming to the platform via its www domain, with the majority of usage happening in-app, which isn’t reflected on this chart.
Add to this the incontrovertible fact that X posts are indexed by Google, while the overwhelming majority of IG posts usually are not, and it’s no surprise that X is seeing more website traffic. If anything, the incontrovertible fact that X was ever trailing IG on this respect is more of a priority, but to imply that which means that X is seeing more overall usage than Instagram isn’t correct, and in reality, not even near the truth of the situation.
This same measure has been utilized in various reports suggesting that X’s traffic is up.
This week, one other report, using data from Ahrefs, suggested that X has seen a 22.3% increase in traffic year-over-year. Just like SEMRush, Ahrefs has no access to app usage data, so this is simply based on domain traffic, i.e. people using X via web browsers on desktop and mobile devices. Which is simply around a fifth of X usage, and inside that element, X is seemingly seeing a rise. That could particually be attributed to Musk’s own posts, and the encompassing commentary around such, but without equivalent app usage data, this insight is essentially meaningless as an indicator of overall X usage, a method or one other.
In Domo’s recent “Data Never Sleeps” report, it also shared that total X posts per minute have increased year-over-year, rising from 347k per minute in 2022, to 360k per minute in 2023. But that belies X’s own insights on this.
Back in September, Elon said that X users were sharing 200 million posts per day within the app, but per week later, Yaccarino corrected this, saying that X is definitely seeing
- 100 million original posts per day
- 100 million replies to posts day by day
- 300 million quote posts and reposts
So, in essence, X is seeing 200 million original posts per day, but using the reported numbers from Domo, this doesn’t match up.
Taking Domo’s 360k posts per minute stat, that may mean that X is currently seeing 518 million posts per day, which is well beyond X’s own reported numbers. At 500 million per day, that may actually equate to 347k posts per minute, which is what X was seeing last yr. So X will not be seeing less usage, but based by itself data, it is also seemingly not seeing more, unless Domo has additional insight into X usage that X seemingly doesn’t.
Another recent claim from Yaccarino, that X is seeing 150 million recent sign-ups per day, can be not being reflected in X’s own usage numbers.
At 1.5 million recent account sign-ups per day, X must be adding 45 million recent users every month, but it surely’s been on 500 million monthly users, in accordance with its own reports, since July. So whether it is seeing 45 million additional sign-ups a month, those recent users usually are not sticking around, and as such, I’m undecided that that is a fantastic stat to spotlight X’s growth.
Finally, Elon has also reported that the platform has reached various recent record highs all year long in cumulative user seconds, though this figure has also been criticized by various industry experts. Musk says that that is essentially the most accurate measure of true engagement, but critics claim that this only suggests that Musk’s most dedicated fans are spending all of their time within the app, and isn’t indicative of a more general usage trend.
In summary, there is not any clear evidence to suggest that X is seeing more usage overall, though it’s also essential to notice the relevance of such in your individual planning. It doesn’t matter if a billion persons are using X, it matters in case your target market is energetic there, so in broad terms, it might be less relevant to your individual marketing plans that X is or is not flying under Musk’s leadership.
But by way of sustainability of the platform, it does matter, and it could impact what becomes of Musk’s X project in the long run. On that front, the incontrovertible fact that the numbers aren’t declining rapidly should mean that X continues to be performing well enough, on balance. But principally, we do not know what the actual state of X’s performance is, based on the information that we’re currently receiving.
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