Musk has repeatedly acknowledged that X continues to succeed in all-time highs in “machine consumer seconds”, a imprecise denominator which isn’t akin to different apps (as they don’t share this information), whereas Musk has additionally stated that X’s lively customers are properly up on what they had been beneath Twitter, now sitting on 253 million each day actives (up from 238m in Twitter’s final efficiency report previous to the acquisition), and 540 million month-to-month customers.

Musk reported one other enhance in X’s month-to-month utilization once more in his dialogue yesterday, whereas additionally highlighting a further attention-grabbing knowledge level that’s worthy of word.

As per Musk:  

“There are 500 million, um, 550 million month-to-month customers, now going to perhaps 600 million month-to-month customers, and any given day there’s on the order of 100 to 200 million posts to the system.”

100 million to 200 million posts is rather a lot, for positive, but when that’s correct, that truly implies that persons are posting rather a lot much less to X than they used on Twitter.

Again in 2013, Twitter reported that it noticed, on common, 500 million posts per day, a quantity that it’s repeatedly used as a benchmark for its efficiency. X administration even referred to that very same determine in March this 12 months, as a part of a weblog publish about its advice algorithm:

“Twitter goals to ship you one of the best of what’s taking place on this planet proper now. This requires a advice algorithm to distill the roughly 500 million Tweets posted each day right down to a handful of high Tweets that finally present up in your machine’s For You timeline.” 

200 million, or 100 million posts, is rather a lot much less X exercise, a decline of, probably, some 400%.

Musk did additionally say that he’s excluding re-posts from this determine, which may very well be a consider the entire calculation, whereas X has additionally, reportedly, rid the platform of lots of bots, one other potential exercise hit.

But it surely does seem to be a giant variance.

Which, truly, would possibly make some sense, whenever you additionally take into account the broader social media utilization development away from public posting. But it surely additionally implies that X is more and more reliant on a small variety of its most lively customers, whom it must hold posting, with a view to hold individuals coming again.

Again in 2021, Pew Analysis revealed a examine which confirmed that the highest 25% of lively Twitter customers within the U.S. produce round 97% of all tweets out there.

Twitter had round 95 million U.S. customers, which might imply that the platform’s core lively consumer cohort is simply round 24 million individuals within the area. So whereas Twitter might have had 238 million whole customers, solely a fraction of them had been truly posting, and if these new figures that Musk’s shared are appropriate, there might now be rather a lot fewer individuals bothering to publish in any respect.

That’s seemingly why its X Premium push has failed to realize traction, as a result of all the advantages of this system, like further attain, recognition, even publish modifying, are for those who truly publish to the app. Which is now a tiny quantity.

It additionally means that X’s “machine consumer seconds” stat may very well be deceptive, by way of total engagement. It wouldn’t shock me in any respect if a smaller group of customers is spending much more time within the app on account of the newest modifications beneath Elon. However with far fewer posts, it appears unlikely that, total, extra persons are spending extra time on X.

The numbers might additionally level to a chance for a competitor, on condition that reaching aggressive scale is much less difficult than the top-line utilization stats might counsel.

As famous, it is also that Twitter was counting re-tweets in its numbers, and perhaps, with bot exercise factored in, 200 million posts per day is definitely extra comparable than it appears.

But it surely’s a giant variance, which is attention-grabbing to notice in broader context.