Elon Musk's X faces 15% decline in monthly users, 54% Ad revenue drop

Since Elon Musk took over X (formerly known as Twitter), the platform has seen a 5% decrease in its monthly user base, and advertising revenue plummeted by 54%.

As reported by Variety, the tech tycoon finalized the acquisition of the debt-ridden Twitter on October 27, 2022, and promptly removed the senior executive team.

Over the course of the past year, Musk has implemented several significant changes, including an 80% reduction in the company's workforce, a rebranding to "X," a revision of Twitter's blue check-mark system where "verified" status is granted to $8-per-month X Premium subscribers, and an experiment to charge users $1 per year for posting to the platform, a measure Musk claims is necessary to combat bots.

Following Musk's takeover and the extensive reshaping of Twitter, millions of users, including numerous celebrities, have left the platform.

In September 2023, web analytics provider SimilarWeb reported a 15% decline in monthly active users for X/Twitter globally (and an 18% decline in the U.S.) compared to the previous year.

Other third-party metrics also indicate a similar reduction, with mobile daily active users decreasing by 16% annually in September 2023, down to 183 million, according to Sensor Tower.

Musk recently claimed that X has 550 million monthly active users who collectively post up to 200 million times daily, although it remains uncertain how this compares to past measurements.

Advertising on the platform has seen even more significant contraction, with U.S. ad spending by major agencies on X/Twitter dropping by 54% from September 2022 to August 2023, according to ad analytics firm Guideline (via WSJ).

The Verge reported. “I actually mean someone’s entire financial life. If it involves money or securities it will be on our platform,” Musk reportedly said.

He added, “You won’t need a bank account… It will blow my mind if we don’t have that rolled out by the end of next year.”