Elon Musk’s tumultuous first year at Twitter: Charts reveal how the platform is now worth less than HALF of what the ‘chief Twit’ paid for it – while daily active users have plummeted by 16%

When Elon Musk took over Twitter (now X) one year ago, he did so with the promise of ensuring freedom of speech and paving the way for the creation of his ‘everything app’. 

In the 12 months that followed, Musk has fired a large chunk of X’s staff, overhauled the verification system, and added a series of paywalls for basic features. 

Despite his lofty goals, Musk has largely succeeded only in driving away advertisers and users alike since paying $44 billion to become ‘chief Twit’.

Of course, Musk is not without his defenders, and a number of users feel that the site is now more vibrant and freer under his ownership.

However, these shocking graphs show how X has lost a large proportion of its users and its value in a year under Musk. 

Despite its outsized political and cultural punch, X has never been one of the larger social media platforms.

Compared with Facebook’s billion-strong userbase or TikTok’s explosive growth, X was actually rather small with only 237.8 million daily users in 2022 according to company filings. 

However, X boasted some of the biggest name politicians and celebrities as users and maintained an extremely loyal userbase.  

If you listen to Musk, X’s success has been unaffected by the takeover and might even be doing better than ever.

In August, Musk claimed that ‘user seconds’ had hit an all-time high in recent months, and at a recent press conference, CEO Linda Yaccarino indicated that X had 225 million daily users. 

However, third party data suggests that X has been doing rather less well than Musk’s optimistic telling might suggest. 

Data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows that in September 2023, X only had 183 million daily active users on mobile apps – down from an estimated 212 million a year earlier. 

Not only is X struggling to hold onto its daily users, but it is also performing poorly in comparison to other social media apps.

Sensor Tower’s data shows that from October 2022, Snapchat saw year on year growth of almost 12 per cent in the number of daily active users on mobile.

YouTube and Instagram likewise saw a steady expansion in the number of daily active users on mobile. 

X’s daily users, on the other hand, tumbled 16 per cent following Musk’s takeover, with the steepest drop coming in July just after Twitter became X.

Data from SimilarWeb also shows that monthly visits to X on desktop and mobile have fallen by 995 million in the year following the takeover.

Between July and October, after Musk changed Twitter to X, site traffic fell by almost 797 million monthly visits.

However, there was an increase in the number of new users downloading the app after Musk purchased the platform, according to analysis by Aptoppia. 

X itself claims that its records show 1.5 million people signing up every day – a year-on-year increase of four per cent. 

Yet, the data shows that daily downloads fell off sharply following Musk’s unexpected rebrand to X, possibly due to people not knowing to search for ‘X’ rather than Twitter.

Analysis by media strategist Eric Seufert found that X plummeted down the App Store’s ‘Top Downloaded’ chart immediately after the change came into effect.

Seufert found that Twitter fell from an average spot of 35th to 54th in only a matter of days.

Recently, X has added the description ‘Formerly Twitter’ to its App Store description, ensuring it does show up if a user searches for Twitter. 

When Musk bought X for the astronomical sum of $44 billion, even he admitted that he was ‘obviously overpaying’ at a price of $54.20 (£44.38) a share. 

In the last year, Musk and his co-investors have watched their $44 billion evaporate as the value of X fell about 55 per cent. 

In March, Musk said in a company email that X was worth about $20 billion and should be thought of as an ‘inverse startup’. 

However, by October, Musk had downgraded the valuation once again and said that the company was worth around $19 billion.

In a company email handing out stock grants to employees, Musk said that equity would be offered at $45 (£36.84) a share – around 83 per cent of what Musk paid a year ago. 

Employees would, however, still be paid in cash at a price of $54.20 (£44.38) for any shares granted to them before the takeover.

Oddly, the estimated valuation of the company did not decline at the same rate as the share price.

Share prices as offered to employees fell only 17 per cent in the year, which would give X a value of $36.52 billion.

X’s declining fortunes are believed to be driven largely by a decline in advertising revenue which made up a big part of its finances. 

After the change of ownership, many big advertisers appeared to flee the platform as Musk’s ‘free speech absolutism’ allowed hate speech and misinformation to flourish. 

According to data from Sensor Tower, of X’s 100 biggest advertisers, only 54 remained by September 2023. 

This, however, does point to a small recovery from the platform’s worst point in February when only 46 advertisers remained. 

Meanwhile the five biggest advertisers from October, including Amazon and Unilever, had cut spending an average of two-thirds. 

In September, Musk said that X’s advertising revenue in the US had fallen by 60 per cent since his purchase.  

CEO, Ms Yaccarino, meanwhile, presents a more optimistic image as she claims that 90 per cent of the top 100 advertisers from a year ago had returned by September. 

Falling revenues and quarterly debt payments of $300m (£246m) have left Musk looking for ways to boost revenue and reduce costs.

Before the takeover, X had around 7,500 full time employees and thousands of contractors working in roles like content moderation.

Musk began slashing staff number almost immediately upon taking control of the company, cutting full time staff to 2,000 in his first month.

By April, the last time Musk announced X’s staffing levels, only 1,500 of the original staff remained.

Controversially, these mass layoffs included teams responsible for combating hate speech and misinformation on the platform.

In September, ahead of 70 elections around the globe, Musk fired the entire team working to prevent election disruption.

In a post, Musk wrote: ‘Oh you mean the “Election Integrity” Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.’

Musk has also fired the entire human rights team who worked to protect those who might face human rights abuse due to their social media presence. 

The EU issued a warning to Musk in September to comply with new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda after X was found to have the highest proportion of disinformation posts of any platform.

A report from the European Commission foud that engagement with pro-Kremlin accounts rose 36 per cent in the first six months of Musk’s ownership after he lifted measures aimed at stopping misinformation.

Likewise, research conducted by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue found that anti-Semitic content more than doubled after Musk took control. 

While many people have abandoned the platform in the year after the takeover there is one person who has been enjoying the platform more than ever: Elon Musk.

Before the takeover, Musk would generally tweet between 40-100 times a week.

But since taking over the company, Musk’s posting has reached ridiculous levels, making up to 400 tweets a week. 

All of this has done wonders for his publicity, making him the most followed person on X.

Earlier this year, it emerged that Musk had asked the engineers to create a special piece of code that would give his tweets more attention and prominence in user’s timelines. 

Musk’s profile was visited 75 per cent more on mobile, and 88 per cent more on desktop in the 12 months after his takeover compared with the year before. 

So, for Musk at least, the last year of X may have been a complete success.