Elon Musk is destroying X (Twitter), and now we have the proof

Elon Musk and the Twitter logo
(Image credit: Future)

October 2022 — Elon Musk buys Twitter, to the chagrin of most users. After changing the name, users have long reported that the platform is dying, with an influx of bots, spam accounts, and the return of some of the worst people in the world. X, as it's now known, has just had its September numbers and stats released, and backing up the experience of users, it doesn’t look good for the newly ‘refreshed’ platform.

Unless, apparently, your name is Elon Musk.

X is dying

Similarweb has just released a report filled to the brim with interesting stats that tell a curious story about the health of X. First, the big headline stat — over the month of September, traffic to the site has dropped -19%. That’s in the US alone, and there’s a similar story across the rest of the world, with a -11.6% drop in the UK, -13.4% in France, -17.9% in Germany and -17.5% in Australia.

Oh dear.

While these aren’t precipitous drops, combined with the continuous drop in traffic and user engagement since Musk first took over, it speaks volumes about the health of the platform since the South African ‘entrepreneur’ bought the social media site for a cool $44 billion. It also tells us that all of Musk's changes aren’t doing good things for the site, with new features like the premium blue check mark falling flat.

It’s not a drop completely unique to X. The traffic to the top 100 social networks has dropped by -3.7% year on year as well — although that number is obviously not as high as X’s impressive effort. There seems to be only one winner in the X numbers game, and it’s not the users, advertisers, or even the media who just had headlines removed from Twitter in an effort to stop users clicking away from the site. It’s not even X itself.

It’s Musk, of course. The only positive number out of all of them is visits to Musks account, which have risen by 96%. In a reasonable world, this would be users visiting his account to give him a nice, healthy block. Chances are it’s just people curious as to what he’s calling ‘interesting’ now, or what fresh new issue he’s ‘looking into.’

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Tammy Rogers
Senior Staff Writer

As iMore's Senior Staff writer, Tammy uses her background in audio and Masters in screenwriting to pen engaging product reviews and informative buying guides. The resident audiophile (or audio weirdo), she's got an eye for detail and a love of top-quality sound. Apple is her bread and butter, with attention on HomeKit and Apple iPhone and Mac hardware. You won't find her far away from a keyboard even outside of working at iMore – in her spare time, she spends her free time writing feature-length and TV screenplays. Also known to enjoy driving digital cars around virtual circuits, to varying degrees of success. Just don't ask her about AirPods Max - you probably won't like her answer.

  • Lee_Bo
    Elon who? And what is X???
    Reply
  • EdwinG
    Lee_Bo said:
    Elon who? And what is X???
    Honestly, I checked out from that network when they banned me in January 2023. Never been happier 😁
    Reply
  • FFR
    “While these aren’t precipitous drops”

    I guess Twitter is still fine.
    Reply
  • FFR
    EdwinG said:
    Honestly, I checked out from that network when they banned me in January 2023. Never been happier

    Technically if they banned you then you didn’t really check out, you got banned.
    Reply
  • EdwinG
    FFR said:
    Technically if they banned you then you didn’t really check out, you got banned.
    More precisely, they banned the app I’m using. I keep getting a 401 Unauthorized.

    When I went legacy.twitter.com on January 13, it worked. Except that it doesn’t display any of the content I follow, so yeah… It was ciao bye for me.
    Reply
  • FFR
    EdwinG said:
    More precisely, they banned the app I’m using. I keep getting a 401 Unauthorized.

    When I went legacy.twitter.com on January 13, it worked. Except that it doesn’t display any of the content I follow, so yeah… It was ciao bye for me.

    So you weren’t banned or your handle reclaimed.


    You didn’t think to try the app? The app clearly has a “following” timeline.
    Reply
  • Just_Me_D
    Nothing to report here. These statements from the article say it all.

    “…over the month of September, traffic to the site has dropped -19%……”

    “It’s not a drop completely unique to X. The traffic to the top 100 social networks has dropped by -3.7% year on year as well….”

    What the article didn’t state was the percentage of dropped Threads traffic. Hmmm.
    Reply
  • FFR
    Just_Me_D said:
    Nothing to report here. These statements from the article say it all.

    “…over the month of September, traffic to the site has dropped -19%……”

    “It’s not a drop completely unique to X. The traffic to the top 100 social networks has dropped by -3.7% year on year as well….”

    What the article didn’t state was the percentage of dropped Threads traffic. Hmmm.

    Probably because traffic to threads bottomed out a month after launch.

    And that wouldn’t fit the narrative.
    Reply
  • EdwinG
    FFR said:
    So you weren’t banned or your handle reclaimed.
    My handle probably doesn’t exist anymore. I locked it and threw away the keys.

    I won’t go back there in any case. Not good for my health.
    FFR said:
    You didn’t think to try the app? The app clearly has a “following” timeline.
    Oh I did. It didn’t behave how I wanted. I want three things:
    Chronological (non-algorithmic)
    Synced across all my devices
    Starts from the point I left off
    Reply