It was one other massive weekend for X, with the tried assassination of former President Donald Trump driving extra dialog within the app.

Although the specifics, as at all times, do require some scrutiny.

Immediately, X proprietor Elon Musk has claimed that the platform reached a brand new “report excessive” in utilization.

Breaking that down, Musk says that X noticed a cumulative “417 billion user-seconds globally” in sooner or later, which equates to 27.8 minutes per consumer, at 250 million every day actives.

Which is so much, however it’s not as a lot as X claimed again in March, when it mentioned that customers are spending half-hour per day within the app on common.

So it’s both not a report, or X made a mistake in its reporting earlier within the yr.

Which I think is the case, as a result of 417 billion seconds additionally comes out to six.95 billion minutes, effectively beneath the 8b that X additionally claimed in March.

Musk’s declare of 93 billion consumer seconds within the U.S. alone additionally equates to fifteen.5 minutes per consumer, on common, assuming 100 million U.S. customers (which X has beforehand claimed). Which isn’t significantly excessive per-person utilization, and on stability, trying on the numbers, actually, it’s laborious to measure what both of those knowledge factors really imply, as we don’t have sufficient qualifying data to measure how cumulative consumer seconds applies to achieve and resonance amongst X customers.

The one assumption we are able to make is that X is reaching fewer folks, which is why it’s switched to reporting cumulative seconds as an alternative. But, on the identical time, X is a beneficial utility for real-time breaking information occasions, significantly given Meta’s aversion to the identical for its Twitter-like Threads app.

So X is little doubt seeing good efficiency, and it must be touting its utilization throughout occasions like this. But, its personal knowledge is complicated and convoluted, and it seemingly contradicts itself so usually that it’s laborious to know what any of its utilization numbers really imply.

From a advertising and marketing perspective, advertisers wish to understand how many individuals they’ll attain, how lengthy persons are engaged, and what components they’re partaking with. Primarily based on this, they’ll then make an knowledgeable alternative about how they’ll attain folks within the app, however I’m unsure that X’s knowledge gives this perception.

As a substitute, it looks as if a continued try to obscure utilization declines, whether or not they’re occurring or not, as a result of it might probably’t make up its thoughts about its personal efficiency figures.

If X desires to be clear, as Musk says, it ought to publish full utilization knowledge, together with customers, and permit broader scrutiny of its efficiency.