Musk Says X Users Reach ‘New High’

Elon Musk said the social media platform X – formerly Twitter – has reached a “new high” of users, amidst increasing competition with Facebook parent Meta Platforms and others.

Musk late on Friday shared a graph in a post on X showing users on the platform rising to more than 541 million, in an image that indicated no time frame.

The post comes as X faces increased competition from Meta, which launched a directly competing platform called Threads on 5 July.

The new platform, which is linked to Instagram, quickly surpassed 100 million users, but Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said last week that more than half had subsequently departed.

Ad sales focus

X has meanwhile struggled with a steep drop in advertising revenue since Musk’s $44 billion (£34bn) takeover last October.

He said earlier this month X’s cash flow was negative due to a nearly 50 percent drop in ad revenues and a heavy debt load, but did not offer details.

The platform had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Musk’s takeover.

Musk said in November X had 259.4 million daily active users.

In May he appointed former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as chief executive, indicating a focus on boosting ad revenues.

Twitter rebrand

Last Monday Twitter abruptly rebranded as ‘X’ after Musk had earlier in the year changed the company’s name to X Corp in official filings.

The new logo appeared on the Twitter site on Monday and at the end of the week the platform’s official mobile app received the rebrand on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

Musk said during the course of the week he planned to remove X’s “light mode”, saying “dark mode” was “better in every way”.

But he later backtracked, saying dark mode would be made default but that a light mode would continue to be offered.