Elon Reports Record-High Monthly Lively Usage of X, Amid Rising Competition from Threads

X/Twitter could have just reached a brand new user high, with owner Elon Musk sharing this chart of the app’s monthly users.

Yeah, there’s not a number of detail to go on, as Musk has intentionally left off the X axis (ironic). But in keeping with Elon a minimum of, X is prospering, despite rising competition, and reports of a broader user exodus, as Musk continues to re-shape the platform formerly referred to as Twitter into his vision for an ‘all the pieces app’.

Which, in fact, now features a full re-brand, with all of the ‘Twitter’ and bird references steadily being faraway from the platform. The newest on this front is that the X icon is now appearing for some users on mobile, which is a major step within the reformation of the app, and the realignment towards Elon’s recent offering.

Prefer it or not, X is coming, and while most reportage has suggested that interest within the app is taking successful consequently, Musk’s data suggests that this shouldn’t be actually the case, with more people seemingly logging in to ascertain out the most recent updates.

Though at the identical time, Elon’s actually developing a reasonably clear pattern for a way he responds to negative news cycles concerning the app.

Back in November, after his initial takeover of Twitter, many analysts questioned how cutting 80% of the corporate’s staff would impact usage. Musk responded by declaring that user numbers had ‘increased significantly world wide because the deal was announced’.

Shortly after this, Elon told then-Twitter staff that the corporate could slide into chapter 11 on account of the state of its overall performance, which triggered one other flood of negative reports concerning the app.

Musk’s response:

Recent user sign-ups reached an all-time high, a part of one other round of positive usage indicators shared by Elon and Co.

The identical pattern was evident again earlier this month, following the launch of Meta’s Twitter clone app Threads.

Amid the early hype, which saw 100 million people signing up inside days of the launch, Musk shared this:

And now, with the platform within the midst of a sudden re-brand, and Threads reportedly seeing more engagement consequently (note: Threads also added a ‘Following’ feed this week), Musk has again come out with some recent record-high usage figure, which is seemingly a method to reassure advertisers that his app is definitely doing positive, despite what would seem like harmful shifts.

But I don’t know, I’m undecided that I trust the numbers coming out of X HQ.

As you might recall, in July last 12 months, as Elon sought to wriggle out of his $44 billion offer for the app, Musk’s legal team argued that Twitter wasn’t actually price all that cash on account of the high amount of bot profiles that it had included in its lively user figures.

Previous Twitter management had long held that the number of faux profiles within the app did not exceed 5% of its total mDAU count, based by itself sampling. But Musk claimed that it was actually much higher than this, along with his own evaluation showing that as much as  33% of then-active Twitter profiles were fakes.

Elon eventually settled on it being a more modest 20% of Twitter’s total user count, (while noting that it was likely much higher). But even at 20%, that will mean that, on the time, 50 million Twitter users were actually bots, at least, in keeping with Musk and his team.

Yet, since Elon’s taken over on the app, he seems to have completely forgotten about these findings. Twitter has since added 15 million more each day actives to its total mDAU count, with Musk reporting that the app now has 252 million mDAU, which is on top of his recent team removing bots and combating spam.

So, based on Elon’s own math, if he’s removed all of the bots (50 million profiles) and added 15 million recent users, that will mean that Twitter/X has added 65 million recent, real human users in lower than a 12 months. That’s astronomically high growth for an app that’s struggled to construct its audience over time.

It’s possible, I assume, but impossible, while the jump to 540 million monthly users can also be an enormous, big leap from the 368 million MAU that Twitter was reported to have last 12 months.

When you furthermore mght add to this the reports that Elon oversaw a program designed to mislead Tesla drivers about battery range, has repeatedly over-promised on the availability of self-driving, and proposed his Hyperloop project to delay a possible high-speed rail project (and sell more cars), amongst other campaigns of misinformation, it’s hard to totally trust the information that he posts from his X account.

So possibly that is true, possibly X has seen dramatic and admittedly unbelievable growth within the face of rising challenges. But as you possibly can tell, I’m personally pretty skeptical about it.

How you’re feeling concerning the same is all the way down to your interpretations of Musk and his actions, but essentially, X could also be growing at a really strong rate, despite repeated proclamations of its death.

 Perhaps that influences your usage of the app.