Is X (Formerly Twitter) right for you?

X historically hasn't been a short form vehicle that I use. I tried it, and it really wasn't for me. So I gotta ask, is X (formerly twitter) right for you?

Here are some GenAI nuggets, I was able to pull from the Worldwide Web :)...

According to NBC News on the day after the election, Nov. 6, X experienced its largest user exodus since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022. And now, users are flooding to alternative text-based social media apps like Bluesky Social and Instagram Threads in the millions.

It was estimated in 2022 that X (formerly known as Twitter) would lose more that 32 million users worldwide by the year 2024 due to abrupt changes brought on by new CEO, Elon Musk.

From a reduced skeleton crew to a loss of advertisers, it was predicted that X simply wouldn’t have the budget or resources to keep up with maintenance. After all, there’s a lot to look after for what was once one of the world’s most dominating sites. Just think about the infrastructure, the content moderation and technical issues for instance.

But let’s fast forward to now. X has lost approximately 30% of users since the start of 2023 (as of spring 2024). It still gets about 250 million visits every day, though standard users are spending only 30 minutes daily on the platform, on average. This makes your window to reach said users actually quite small. It was also recently polled by YouGov that only 40% of people have a positive opinion of X.

The trend is seemingly on the down-swing as activity drops and ratings are sub-par, however, X is still very much active. With users 30% down, the majority of accounts have not deactivated. In fact, Elon Musk rolled out a paid “premium” type of account, which hosts the most engaged users out of all existing accounts. If you’re going to go so far as to pay for a service, you better get your money’s worth—right? Nonetheless, this does showcase that there are loyal users who are devoted to the platform.?

So what does this mean for the future of X?

Well in 2024, people are still predicting the platform’s ultimate demise. Let’s take to the street and ask the general public what they think. And by “taking to the street”, we mean taking to Reddit (another social media platform commonly used to get a variety of anonymous opinions). When prompted on the topic, Reddit users shared opinions such as: “People will continue to leave twitter until it’s bought by a human and purged of Muskrats.”, “Personally I’ll be binning it or not using it very often. Getting a bit fed up with it” and “My money is on it not existing in 2025 (unless it gets a new owner)”.?

NBC News spoke to six people who have joined or committed to using Threads and Bluesky in place of X after the election because of Musk. Each of them cited growing issues on X, including bots, partisan advertisements and harassment, which they all felt reached a tipping point when Donald Trump was elected president last week with Musk’s support.

This week, the Guardian said it would stop posting on X, citing concerns over toxic content on the platform. The German football club St Pauli, the actor Jamie Lee Curtis, the US TV journalist Don Lemon and Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia have also announced they will no longer post on the site.

While X is not my chosen platform, it still attracts a very specific audience, and demographic that don't necessarily align with my values, but does have a place for those who do.

I'm giving Bluesky Social a turn to see if I can find both an audience, and the type of content I find desirable, and we will see how it goes. Near term, you can find me on Instagram primarily sharing pictures of food & family.