Users decreasing, traffic decreasing, come in declining advertising, revenues decreasing, reputation declining, declining credibility: however you look at it, there is practically not a metric that does not say that Elon Musk’s first year as owner of Twitter was not at least complicated, if not downright unsuccessful. In reality, there is a positive metric: the visibility of Musk’s tweets has increased (a lot).. Which is something he cared a lot about, but which investors and ordinary people probably care little about.
A year has passed since that October 26, 2022 in which the volcanic entrepreneur entered the San Francisco headquarters of Twitter (now called X) with a sink in his hand, accompanied by that phrase that then he went around the world: “Let that sink in!” (we explained it here). And one year later, the risk of sinking for Twitter is more concrete than ever, with Rolling Stone even writing that the platform would be “one step away from death”.
But how could this have happened? How is it possible that one of the historic social networks, loved by millions of people around the world and over time become synonymous with rapid and reliable information, has fallen so low? How could this happen? Let’s first look at some numbers, to give an idea of the extent of the phenomenon, and then we’ll see the 5 reasons that (in our opinion) led to the decline of Twitter. Or of X, as Musk prefers.
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Twitter numbers: users down for the first time
It was said that the parameters were all decreasing, which Similarweb (a company whose job is precisely to analyze site traffic) elaborated and analyzed precisely on the occasion of Twitter’s first birthday under Musk’s control: we told them about them last weekwe summarize them here for convenience.
First of all, the userswhich is a fundamental number for social media (simplifying, it is above all on this that its value is calculated, also in advertising terms) and which in fact social media tends not to disclose: according to recent data from Statista, Twitter will close 2023 with little more than 350 million active monthly users and 335 million by 2024, in double decline and for the first time in years (in 2022 the platform was almost at 370 million). To give some context, the reviled Facebook stands at around 3 billion monthly active users and TikTok is probably over a billion.
Then, the traffic: last September, traffic to the Twitter site fell by 14% compared to 2022 worldwide and in the same period of time, traffic to the portal for advertisers (which is ads.twitter.com) decreased by 16.5 %. In the United States, which is the country from which more or less a quarter of the traffic to twitter.com comes, contacts dropped by 19% in September, a trend similar to that recorded in other parts of the world: -17.9% in Germany, -17.5% in Australia, -13.4% in France and -11.6% in Great Britain.
Con l’appthings are not better: still in the USA, -17.8% year on year for monthly active users on iOS and Android; Globally, Android usage dropped 14.8%. Looking at the September data alone, the numbers are consistent with the negative trend: a drop of 11.6% in the United States and 7% worldwide.
As for the credibilitycertainly does not help Musk’s conflictual relationship with newspapers and information sites: partly for some of the reasons that we will see below, the platform has certainly become less interesting for publishers (for whom among other things many features that were once free have become paid), as demonstrated the case of the American NPR or that of the New York Times. Until a few years ago, around 4% of the well-known newspaper’s site traffic came from Twitter, but in recent months this percentage has fallen below 1%. And the same goes for many other publications, even in Italy.
As mentioned, there is a small and positive downside: Year over year, traffic to Musk’s profile and tweets grew by 96%. Which is an impressive value in an absolute sense and even more so when compared to the rest of the site’s performance: it is something that the new owner he wanted it a lot (so much so that he changed the Twitter algorithm to get it)and on which he undoubtedly succeeded.
In fairness, it should be noted that Twitter isn’t the only one among social networks to struggle in terms of traffic and users. Even if it is the only one to do so in such a sensational way: between September 2022 and September 2023, the traffic volume of more or less all platforms dropped, on average by 3.7%. The only exception is TikTok (grew by 22.8%), but that’s definitely another story.
This image and the opening one were created using StableDiffusion
The 5 moves with which Elon Musk broke Twitter
There are multiple reasons why what is happening is happening, some empirical and others more concrete and objective: on the one hand, Musk is definitely a divisive character and his arrival may have alienated many people and many companies from the platform; on the other, the continuous changes of direction, leaps forward, announcements of functions that then do not arrive or do not arrive as they were explained (the stop to the possibility of blocking annoying users, the idea of making everyone pay and so on) , they definitely don’t contribute to create that stable environment that advertising investors would need.
But it’s there obviously more, there are 5 moves that Musk has made in the last year that in our opinion have put Twitter in the difficult situation it is in now. We have listed them below, in chronological order from oldest onwards.
Fire 4 thousand people
Musk is undoubtedly a hard worker, but he also has a somewhat toxic conception of work: he sleeps in the office, makes fun of those who are not like him on this and is against smartworking. And one of the first things he did when he bought Twitter was start firing people. One of the first in the true sense of the word: not even a week after the deal was concluded, it had already eliminated almost 4 thousand employees. Out of a workforce of around 7500 people, we are talking about a 75% cut. This he had heavy and dramatic consequences on operational capacity of Twitter, on the management of daily tasks, even on the simple operation of the site according to standards that we now (rightly) take for granted.
Delete the moderator team
This point is connected to the previous one, e in general to Musk’s curious interpretation of the concept of free speech: Another of the first things he did (at the end of last November) was decimate the team of moderators, among those most affected by the layoffs. With results that are both ridiculous and dangerous, like leave only one person in charge of removing child pornography material from the platform. This also meant that Twitter stopped fighting misinformation on Covid-19 and the coronavirus, leaving the field open for the return of the craziest theories on the pandemic, on vaccines and the alleged secret plans of the strong powers. And it’s made Twitter a less comfortable environment to be in.
Mess up the blue check
This point is also connected to the previous one, and here we talk even more about sensations and perception: return the blue check for a fee (except then give it as a gift to VIPs), the one that once identified verified profiles on social media, has completely changed the rules of the game. And not in the way Musk intended: yes, he partly democratized access to this coveted badge but also created enormous confusion. Contrary to what happens practically everywhere else, on Twitter you can be pretty sure that if a guy has a blue check he is a conspiracy theorist, an impostor, someone who pretends to be someone he is not. AND use that (fake) credibility to spread fake news. And this also made Twitter a less comfortable environment to be in.
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Change the name of the company
Twitter is over 15 years old, it is one of the historic social networks and is active since March 21, 2006, since Jack Dorsey’s first post, one of the founders. In this time he has built a name for himself, his own vocabulary (made up of tweets, twits, retweets, chirps and tutters) and his own recognizable iconography. And if there is one thing that any marketing manual, any guide to becoming an entrepreneur, even the basic ones that you buy on newsstands, recommend not doing is wasting such a wealth. Don’t devastate the brand image, the perception that customers have of the brand. Which is exactly what Musk did last April, changing the company’s name and logo, demanding that users adapt to the new terminologies and also exposing himself to multiple lawsuits (because the name X is not that original). . And again, raising many doubts in potential advertising investors.
Hide newspaper headlines
This is recent, dating back to the beginning of October, and is perhaps the last nail in the coffin of the relationship between Musk and newspapers: the platform no longer shows the titles of the articles that are shared. The company says it’s for a stylistic issue, to improve the appearance of the feed (for be more aesthetic, as they would say on TikTok) and probably also to reduce the phenomena of clickbait and titles that do not deliver what they promise. And yet, the real reason is another: to make it more difficult for users to click somewhere and go elsewhere, to leave Twitter for another site. This one has though made it more difficult to understand what you are reading and what is the topic of the article that you have before your eyes (what is the title, in fact) and pushed more and more people to look for news from other sources. On other social networks, that is.
@capoema