X’s Tumultuous First Year Under Elon Musk, in Charts

25 Oct 2023

When Elon Musk acquired Twitter a year ago, he pledged to turn the social-media platform into an “everything app” that would eclipse what the long-struggling business had accomplished since its founding in 2006. One year in, much of Musk’s grand vision has yet to play out.

The company is struggling on a number of metrics, according to third-party data, including attracting users. It is trying to rebuild its advertising business after that revenue plummeted post takeover, and the platform also has been navigating content-moderation challenges after Musk loosened such rules.

Musk has defended the company’s trajectory, recently posting that it is “growing fast.”

Sliding user metrics—but still used by many
Musk has said X is thriving, posting in August that the platform hit records for “user-seconds” in recent months. The company said in September it has 245 million daily active users, lower than the 259.4 million figure Musk shared in November 2022 but higher than the 237.8 million number that then-Twitter disclosed for the second quarter of 2022, the last time it publicly filed financial results before Musk took it private.

Third-party data are less optimistic. X’s daily active users via mobile apps dropped by 16% in September compared with the month Musk took over, according to an analysis by research firm Sensor Tower.