X Platform Challenges: Old Twitter Facing Difficulties

It appears that the old Twitter is in bad shape. The X Platform challenges have grown increasingly since Elon Musk took over the social network. This affects the work of a digital marketing agency and the decisions your company needs to make regarding its digital presence.

X has been progressively losing users and advertising for a year now, and it seems Musk’s Xploration of Twitter isn’t going as planned. The social network also laid off employees. X services changed. Features such as Circles and the news headlines no longer exist..

Furthermore, Musk has not reaped good results from these decisions. The billionaire bought the social network for US$44 billion and the value fell 67% in 12 months. The company’s current value stands at US$19 billion.

In this text, you will get a grasp of the problems the platform is experiencing in order to make your own informed decisions.

When Twitter became X

“Since Musk bought the company in October 2022, it’s lost approximately 13% of its daily active users. And its rebrand from Twitter to X accelerated the decline.” – according to Big Technology.

In 2009, Twitter emerged as a beloved and engaging social network. When Musk bought it he was determined to transform the network into something else. It was in 2023 that the billionaire decided to change the name and rebrand the platform, renaming it “X”.

The change went down badly and drove users and advertisers away. This was because it came together with other problems you will see below.

X Platform Challenges

Fewer users

The Twitter audience was very loyal. Users accessed the network daily and now they seem to have become discouraged since the change in management.

This is proven in data. A recent survey by Sensor Tower shows that the usage rate of X users in August 2023 was down 13% from that in the same period last year.

The platform also lost around 9% of users from the previous year, with this decline taking place over nine consecutive months.

Musk tried to attract more people by sharing the monetization with users, but even that doesn’t seem to have worked.

Official information is not reliable

Based on a recent Apptopia analysis monitoring the behavior of over 100,000 mobile app users, it was found that X currently boasts approximately 121 million daily active users. This figure stands in notable contrast to X’s self-reported number of 253 million users.

Elon Musk, after claiming a record high of 250 million monetizable daily active users (mDAU) on X, now faces scrutiny for discrepancies in user numbers.

Musk asserted that 20% of the users were bots, but if he eliminated them, it would imply adding 12 million genuine users and replacing 47.6 million fake profiles within a short period.

Questions arise surrounding the credibility of these figures and Musk’s intentions in relation to a $44 billion takeover offer. X’s assertion of having 550 million monthly active users is also in doubt, suggesting a more realistic estimate of around 223 million based on industry patterns.

Apptopia’s analysis hints at a widening gap between daily and monthly users, potentially placing X’s actual audience behind major social platforms.

The uncertainties surrounding user counts raise scepticism about X’s standing compared to competitors like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest.

Lots of promises but at a cost

The billionaire’s idea is to transform X into a “super-app” and surpass the Chinese WeChat – where you can do everything (from getting a divorce to paying bills). At least that’s what’s been promised.

But it doesn’t come for free. Soon, all users will have to pay at least US$1 to use the network.

They can also subscribe to X Premium (late Twitter Blue) and gain access to:

• edit posts
• publish videos and long texts
• have preference in response visibility
• see fewer ads
• have the verified seal (which used to be free and the right of public figures)

But the question remains: why would the user pay to use a social network if there are others like Threads available which offer the same service for free?

Mass layoffs

The South African businessman lost 75% of his workforce after taking over Twitter. Either due to layoffs in areas that he did not think were important – such as content moderation – or due to the employees themselves not agreeing with the billionaire’s stance.

The outcome of the dismissals resulted in more than two thousand lawsuits from former employees that are pending in US courts. And it seems that justice is on the workers’ side as more than US$3,5 million was compensated in lawsuits.

Lack of moderation

Speaking of mass layoffs, it’s time to return to the lack of appreciation for the platform’s content moderation sector. This didn’t go down well with advertisers. The billionaire preaches what he calls “freedom of speech”.

But the truth is that the lack of moderators has allowed messages of anti-Semitism, Nazism and fascism to run rampant across the network.

And there is no advertiser who wants to be on a platform where their name can be associated with these practices and misinformation.

How does Twitter end impact digital marketing?

Twitter has long been a coveted platform for marketers to engage with their target audience, build brand awareness and drive website traffic. Its real-time updates and interactive nature make it an ideal tool for staying relevant and connecting with customers.

Smart marketers would have already implemented a diverse social outreach strategy not overly reliant on any single platform. Thus, parting ways with Twitter shouldn’t pose any significant issue.

An intelligently revamped marketing strategy for social channels could be just as, if not more, beneficial than those that once included Twitter – especially if competing platforms improve their services to fill the void in the market left in Twitter’s absence.

Even though X was the result of this change within Twitter, brands are keeping an eye on the impact of Musk’s controversial speeches relating to their businesses. Joining a platform that doesn’t moderate hate speech appears somewhat problematic for companies.

And there is still much to say on this subject. But what remains is the monitoring of the platform’s situation and understanding whether the X Platform challenges are here to stay.