In brief: Elon Musk’s former Twitter platform X is finding it challenging to increase its daily active users (DAUs), partly due to competition from Meta’s rival social media app, Threads. X’s DAUs in the second quarter of 2024 grew by just 1.6% compared to the same period a year earlier.
As reported by the Financial Times, X’s DAUs in the second quarter of this year reached 251 million.
The Times highlights that X’s year-on-year growth rate has been declining since Musk’s takeover in October 2022, hitting a low of 1.6% in Q2 2024. In the same quarter last year, X had 247 million users. Back in Q2 2020, X’s YoY DAUs experienced a significant surge of 33.8%.
The primary reason for X’s struggle to attract new users is the competition from Threads. Meta’s Twitter-like platform garnered over 100 million users within a week of its launch, making it the fastest-growing app ever. Although engagement has decreased since then, it was reported in February that Threads’ daily downloads had doubled or tripled compared to X’s over the previous three months.
Threads still needs to catch up to X in terms of user numbers. Mark Zuckerberg reports that his platform has 175 million monthly active users, whereas X claims to have 600 million MAUs. Threads is estimated to have only 38 million daily active users.
Since Musk took over, X has seen several changes, such as the elimination of moderation teams and offering verified ticks to anyone willing to pay. Musk also upset departing advertisers by telling them to “go f*ck yourselves,” although he later clarified that it was more about freedom of speech.
X also struggles with bots and fake stories. Late last year, the European Union identified the site as the social media platform with the highest ratio of misinformation/disinformation posts.
