It’s been a year since Elon Musk paid a whopping $44 billion to buy Twitter. A lot has changed since then, such as the name of the service. X is also seeing a decline in trust, number of users and advertisers.
Musk liep een jaar geleden met een wasbak (sink in het Engels) het hoofdkantoor van X – toen nog Twitter – binnen. De miljardair liet er een grappig bedoelde video van maken, zodat hij die vervolgens op het netwerk kon plaatsen met de woordspeling: “Let that sink in.” Laat dat maar eens bezinken, was zijn boodschap.
De overname zelf bleek geen grap, al kocht Musk het bedrijf in een opwelling. Dat schrijft biograaf Walter Isaacson in zijn dit jaar verschenen boek over de miljardair. Toen Musk besefte dat hij te veel geld had geboden, probeerde hij onder de deal uit te komen. Later luchtte de topman zijn hart bij een team van Tesla: “Ik weet niet waarom ik het heb gedaan. Het kwam erop neer dat de rechter zei dat de verkoop moet doorgaan, want anders… En nu denk ik: oké shit.”
Na afronding van de overname ging Musk direct aan de slag. Hij ontsloeg topmensen en haalde Twitter van de beurs. Het aantal werknemers slonk van achtduizend naar nog geen vijftienhonderd. Van de overgebleven personeelsleden werd verwacht dat ze alles voor het bedrijf opzijzetten.
Een paar veranderingen onder Musk
- De oorspronkelijke blauwe vinkjes zijn verdwenen. Die waren bedoeld om geverifieerde accounts aan te duiden.
- Inmiddels kan iedereen een blauw vinkje kopen. Wel zijn er nu ook gouden vinkjes voor een aantal geverifieerde accounts.
- Twitter veranderde in juli van naam en heet sindsdien X.
- Gebruikers die eerder waren geband, omdat ze zich niet aan de regels hadden gehouden, konden onder Musk terugkeren. Zo zijn rapper Ye (weg wegens antisemitisme) en oud-president Donald Trump (weg wegens opruiing) weer terug op het platform.
- Sinds deze week kun je (video)bellen via Twitter.
Top priority: making money
It is important for Musk to quickly recover his $44 billion (and then more than €41 billion) worth. X is in debt and spends more money than he earns. A company can save costs by separating employees. And now X is trying to sell paid subscriptions to make money.
For €8 per month, you will not only get a blue checkmark to show that you are paying, but you can also write longer messages that are also seen more often. You also get access to TweetDeck and can share longer videos in higher quality.
Another reason to focus on making money is that many advertisers have left the service. In July, it emerged that the messaging service had lost about half of its advertising revenue. The fact that the platform’s rules change often and that X gives users above-average freedom to say what they want deters many advertisers. They don’t want their message to be next to messages containing hate speech or fake news.
The number of daily users is decreasing
It’s difficult to verify precisely how many users X has. These numbers are no longer public since Musk took his company private. There’s a lot of juggling of numbers. At a recent tech conference, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that 225 million users are joining the platform daily.
This represents a 10 percent decrease compared to the number before the acquisition. Then the counter reached 254.5 million. This number will be after the conference Revised to 245 million. Although this is still a decline.
Analysts also made estimates based on application insights. This is how he writes Utopia The number of X users logging in daily has dropped from 140 million to 120 million in the past year. This represents a decrease of 13 percent.
X alternatives have grown over the past year as dissatisfied X users switch. Although these services lag far behind Musk’s platform. The currently closed Bluesky website, which was founded by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has more than one million users. 1.8 million people are active in Mastodon. Threads, a Meta alternative that is not yet usable in Europe, has an estimated 33 million daily users.
How fake news about war is created through this real-life video game
Drenched in fake news
This is partly due to the free X policy and lack of moderation, which has led to users withdrawing. Many moderators have been fired. As a result, there is now more scope for discrimination and the spread of fake news on the platform.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has made this painfully clear. Become X Flooded Through messages, photos and videos that are difficult or impossible to verify. Paying members often share these messages, which also increases reach. For example, photos have emerged of the plane that was allegedly shot down over the Gaza Strip. But it turns out they are from a game.
To make matters worse, Musk himself shared two accounts of following the war. But researchers criticized these accounts for spreading fake news. Before Musk deleted the post, it had already been viewed nearly eleven million times.
The app for everything
Since Elon Musk took office, a lot has happened at X. However, this is just the beginning. X should eventually become an app for everything, just like China’s WeChat. You can chat there, but you can also buy clothes, play games or order food.
The fact that you can now make (video) calls is part of this plan. It should soon also be possible to stream games via the platform, as Musk himself has already proven several times. X must also support financial transactions. Musk planned this decades ago with PayPal and X.com. The billionaire now says he needs five years to transform Twitter into what he envisions.