[next_xibalba]

Has Twitter’s usage declined?

I’ve seen a lot of opinions like this but they seem to be motivated reasoning and/or summarization of the views of a small echo chamber, but not based on actual data.

I would guess most users of social media (and products/services for that matter) are not too concerned with antics of the owners.

[slg]

Twitter is a worse experience for me today than it was before Musk purchased the company. I don't need to even be aware of his antics for that to be true. Killing Tweetbot is the biggest issue for me. The official iOS app is awful so now I never check Twitter from my phone. Plus my timeline isn't as interesting because lots of people I follow simply stopped posting. Maybe they left due to Musk's antics, but it makes my experience worse even if I don't care about Musk.

It seems pretty inarguable that some people are using the site less. I'm one. In order for overall usage to remain the same, there needs to be people making up for that. Do these people exist? Who is using the site more because of Musk? I'm honestly not sure, because if they do exist, I don't follow them.

[margorczynski]

This anecdote is the answer to the lack of data that would support the user count decline of Twitter? I'm sorry to damage your ego but you're just a single data point and extrapolating how you see things to a non-quantifiable amount of other users isn't a reasonable argument.

[slg]

I didn't say it was an answer to a lack of data. That was the reason I asked for anecdotal data that runs counter to my experience. No one outside of Twitter is going to have actual data on this and I'm not sure if we should even trust any data coming out of Twitter at this point considering Musk's reputation.

And for the record, that anecdote is not a single data point. It is a single statement based off my observations of the hundreds of accounts I follow. My timeline is less active. That isn't because I use the site less. It is because cumulatively the accounts I follow are using the site less.

[lmm]

> It seems pretty inarguable that some people are using the site less. I'm one. In order for overall usage to remain the same, there needs to be people making up for that. Do these people exist? Who is using the site more because of Musk? I'm honestly not sure, because if they do exist, I don't follow them.

I'm using the site more now. Japanese twitter feels a lot more natural and nicer than it did pre-Musk.

[slg]

That's interesting. What has Twitter done recently to improve the experience of Japanese users?

[lmm]

Trending topics have shifted. Allegedly they removed some manually-curated trending system that was previously in place, which may have been a system that worked well for some demographics but wasn't working great for Japan.

[slg]

That is mildly surprising. I would have assumed a manual process would have done a better job of adapting to different languages and cultures than an automated process unless that manual work was done by people outside that cultural context.

[izzydata]

I hear that they were manually pushing political tweets which I guess Japan doesn't hate engage with as much as people in the west do.

[kolbe]

Is there a single major service from a Silicon Valley internet company that doesn't get worse by the year? They all loss lead for years and years, then try to diminish the experience for profit in late stages.

[WWLink]

As someone that never really used twitter before, but deleted my account when the musk drama reminded me I had one... The only difference is now I hear more people complaining about twitter being down, features being broken, search being broken, number of likes/retweets being broken, etc... but those people still use twitter and still send me links to tweets that I don't bother to read.

Personally, I don't use twitter because I don't like it - and the recent changes make me dislike twitter even more than I did before. I wish more people would walk the walk when they talk the talk. Heheh.

I like reddit because it's like a very popular forum with subforums on gazillions of different topics, and there's a lot of stuff I enjoy on there because of that.

I don't understand how using reddit vs twitter is a political decision (in most use cases). They are completely different tools.

[maximus-decimus]

>Who is using the site more because of Musk?

Ironically, probably musk haters.

I had a coworkers who probably despised Trump as much as Hitler, but she literally couldn't stop herself from doom scrolling his twitter account.

You don't need to make the app better to get more users, just increase engagement even if it's through the power of contempt. Just look at news channels that are always trying to make people angry.

[input_sh]

> Has Twitter’s usage declined?

Literally nobody outside of Twitter knows. As it's no longer a public company, they're under no obligation to share any metrics.

My guess would be it increased until the end of 2022 (people were interested in how it's gonna turn out and more importantly World Cup was happening), but I'd be shocked if the usage didn't drop dramatically as 2023 rolled in.

[suddenclarity]

Interestingly Musk made it more transparent by introducing view count to every tweet so a simple solution might be to gather stats for the top 1000 users and each new tweet after 48 hours or so. Combine it into a trendline going forward. Under the assumption that the numbers are real but considering how many people that hate him, it would be a bold move to fake them and not expect to get caught.

[noncoml]

Sample of one confirming your theory. I created an account and start using it to follow Musk as I thought he was some evil genius and loved to follow him and hate him.

I lost interest after a while when I realised he is of average intelligence with lots of emotional issues and just a crazy amount of money.

Haven’t logged in to Twitter for more than a couple of months now. Must not forget to delete my account at some point.

[chii]

i've seen a wave of people looking to migrate to masterdon or some alternative, but those messages have slowed, and those who have "migrated" haven't stopped tweeting on twitter either.

The network effect is real, so without substantial change, twitter is still the best platform for tweeting.

[ropable]

I don't have any hard metrics to prove it, but most notable people in InfoSec (that I follow, anyway) moved off Twitter to infosec.exchange late last year. It's probably the case that individual "communities" of Twitter users have migrated off the site to a greater or lesser extent.