Report suggests daily active users for Musk’s X stalling as competitors grow

A new report this week indicates that Elon Musk’s X may be stalling, even as other social media sites flourish.

According to a Tuesday report from the Financial Times, X — Mr. Musk’s new incarnation of Twitter — had around 256 million daily active users in the second fiscal quarter of 2024, representing a 1.6% increase from the same period last year.

This stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Musk’s claims about the site’s user base and the site’s typical growth patterns. Before Mr. Musk bought the site for $44 billion, Twitter repeatedly increased its user base by the tens of millions every quarter.

X has not shared detailed data on its daily active users outside of claims from Mr. Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino. Mr. Musk took the company private soon after acquiring Twitter in late 2022. In November 2022, Mr. Musk boasted that the site had added an extra 1.6 million daily active users in one week.

X denied the conclusions of the Financial Times report, claiming that the company has seen monthly growth in daily active users from late last year to June 2024. But the prospect of stagnating traffic numbers comes as the site’s competitors continue to grow: X’s main competitor, Meta’s Threads, celebrated its first anniversary in June and the platform announced it hosted 175 million users.

Decentralized X alternative Mastodon also boasts 10 million users, while Bluesky has grown to 6 million users since opening its doors to all users late last year.