Since his takeover more than a year ago, Elon Musk has made a number of controversial changes to Twitter. Aside from changing the name of the app to X, these include firing 80 per cent of the firm’s workforce and putting the platform’s features behind a paywall.
Now, a report suggests people in the UK have had enough, as the platform has lost nearly three million British users in the past 12 months. Although the app is still the fourth most popular in the UK, it trails behind the likes of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, the data from Ofcom shows. Musk himself may also be proving too contentious for his own good, as the questions surrounding him and his leadership continue.
X lost 2.9 million monthly users between May 2022 and May 2023, according to Ofcom’s Online Nation report, which was published today. Back in May last year, it had a total adult monthly audience in the UK of 26.8 million, but by May 2023 this figure had fallen to 24 million.
However, the average time spent on the site by UK adults per day has risen from six minutes to 10 minutes over the same time period. Although Musk only took over Twitter in October 2022, the app has been ‘experiencing a gradual decline in UK online adult reach in recent years‘ the report says – although Musk likely accelerated this.
Jake Moore, tech expert and security advisor at ESET, blamed Musk’s numerous controversial decisions at X for the waning user base. ‘When 80 per cent of a workforce leaves for a number of reasons, knock-on effects are inevitable,’ Mr Moore told MailOnline.
‘X has seen a shift in direction where some tweets are not seen by many users and paid for, verified users are promoted, but people often don’t like change. ‘Trying to enforce payment for services that used to be the default, such as direct messaging to all, can be difficult for long-term users to swallow.’
‘Younger users favour short-form video platforms which may also underpin the shift to other social media whilst offering free features by default and showing more variety,’ he said. According to the Ofcom data, YouTube is the most popular app for British adults with 43.5 million monthly users, although this marks a decline from 43.9 million in May 2022.
The biggest winner in terms of gaining users is unsurprisingly TikTok, which went from 16.6 million adult users in the UK back in May 2022 to 21.2 million in May 2023. This yearly gain of 4.6 million users was more than any other app in the top 10, and although TikTok is only ranked fifth it could climb higher above the likes of Facebook and Instagram.
‘Video has a far bigger reach than micro-messaging,’ Moore said. ‘Twitter will have to target younger people with videos to keep its audience share.’ Although not in the top 10, another rival to X is Threads – which was launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta in July to rival X and has ‘piqued interest‘ among Brits, Ofcom says.
In the UK by the start of September, 23 per cent of online users aged 16 and over said they had used Threads. This is surprisingly high, especially compared with those who said they have ever used X/Twitter (52 per cent), which was first launched way back in 2006. Threads – which is closely linked to a person’s Instagram account – became the most rapidly downloaded app in history when it was released during the summer. More than 70 million people downloaded Threads in the two days after its July 5 launch – a figure that reached 150 million within a week.
However, Threads has since lost users and experts think it could have trouble ever replacing X, despite the ongoing controversy surrounding Musk. Another app that could soon take users from X is Bluesky, which got a limited release on Android and iOS earlier this year.
