I just want to discuss stocks, news, and sports with the guys/girls. BSKY by far has the best discussions for the last year or so and its not even close.
Anyone playing the platform alive / dead game needs to find better activities.
I have been "online" back to the old AOL / ICQ days just like you. I find myself pulling back and cutting time spent online to mostly high value priorities with some fun in between.
Either I have gotten old (early 40s) or the Internet is just not as much fun as it used to be. AI has given me a spark and some of the same feels as playing SC Brood War battlenet.
One point on the SimilarWeb data: the fact that Threads doesn't even register as a website there proves that all the traffic is from Instagram, which is a mobile-first experience. Hence, no web traffic. The other important metric is time spent. X is at a 30-minute average per session, while Threads is at a 5-minute average per session. Because no one uses Threads on purpose.
And if you don't like this data, there is plenty more.
As a marketer who looks at things dispassionately you watched a lot of this play out and were scratching your head for sure, fascinating case study in human behavior particularly in our sector
"Because no one uses Threads on purpose" is probably the truest line that has been uttered.
I must have had 500 invites to use Threads, and I held the line. Until two weeks ago.
Pluses: pictures of people's home gardens and their vegetables, which is a new interest of mine.
Minuses: everything else on that platform. I'm not kidding, it's a cesspool of all of the behaviors that I absolutely hate about every other platform. Spam. "Hi cutie" behavior from messages from Indian scammers who are masquerading as hot chicks." Not a real network at all, just a sub-thread of a sub-thread of Facebook, I guess.
Another interesting newsletter, thank you. I'm not a huge social media user, but it seems like Bluesky and Threads remain a drop in the bucket compared to Twitter/X across many metrics. I knew they were well behind Twitter/X, but the extent of the latter's edge surprised me. Why haven't Bluesky and Threads been able to compete?
It's incredible to see the headlines and how people in general perceive the state of X/Twitter, and how short-sighted the declarations are.
X is what you make it and with a platform like that, generalizing everything about is as simply good or bad doesn't further a productive discussion about it whatsoever.
If your point is that Twitter would need to be turned off as a product to be dead, I'm not sure anyone ever thought that would be the case.
What is true is that the Twitter that used to exist is dead. There is still a service with many of the same features, but it's very different now. I use it very rarely as I got tired of the kind of filth that the algorithm would inject into my feed. Almost everyone I enjoyed talking to on there has left, replaced by what look like bots and sock puppet accounts.
Meanwhile, one reason activity is so high is that all of the bot protections were removed. We have no measurement of how many Twitter users are real anymore. It could be as high as 90%, no one knows.
Finally, as a business Twitter is very dead. Advertising revenue evaporated (Elon even tried suing to get them back https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05dlm0l0jgo), premium subscriptions never took off and it had to be rolled into X and then SpaceX to keep going. It's not a viable concern on it's own anymore, the question is how long they want to keep using it as a test bed for Grok, which likely depends on how long Grok continues to exist as a model (SpaceX is busy leasing out all it's compute).
Heard that it would be dead as in no longer existing many, many times. If people used more precise terms I wouldn't call them wrong, in fact I only wrote this story bc a commenter said "I heard it predicted dead so many times, you should write how it isn't." Changed, sure
So...... there are 230-235 million Americans between ages of 18-75. And I'm supposed to believe that over half of all Americans I see out in the public today are active Twitter users? Hmmmm, not buying it.
This is a common mistake when reading audience data. Monthly unique visitors ≠ daily active users. By that logic, because Google gets hundreds of millions of U.S. visitors each month, you'd have to believe every American is searching Google all day long.
The chart isn't claiming half the country uses Twitter every day. It's showing relative scale. Whether the true number is 110 million, 130 million, or 150 million, X is still an order of magnitude larger than Bluesky and dramatically larger than Threads on the metrics being measured. That's the actual takeaway.
Ok never would dispute its far larger than bluesky or threads but I already assumed that. I think the bigger point that we're discussing (or why they are releasing numbers) is about it's overall influence and importance.
Now asking everyone's favorite friend AI. Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok all gave similar responses.
Your skepticism is spot on; the claim that 130 million American adults are active on Twitter (now X) is mathematically and demographically implausible.
The Reality:
• Actual Usage: Industry analysis shows that the total user base (including inactive and automated accounts) for the United States is around \(95\) to \(108\) million accounts across all ages.
• The Adult Figure: Surveys by the Pew Research Center consistently show that only about \(21\%\) to \(22\%\) of U.S. adults use Twitter.
• The Math: Using the \(22\%\) metric, the true number of active adult users in the U.S. is approximately \(50\) to \(51\) million, which is closer to a fifth of the adult population rather than half.
Why the "130 Million" Claim Exists:
• Bot & Fake Accounts: Public platform figures frequently lump automated bots, suspended accounts, and multiple accounts (e.g., someone with both a personal and work handle) into their "total user" counts.
• Duplicate Log-ins: Third-party researchers like BankMyCell measure "active users" using logins rather than unique human individuals. If one person uses the app on their phone, desktop, and tablet, they can be counted as multiple active users in internal metrics.
• "Lurkers": According to data from the Pew Research Center, a massive chunk of this audience doesn't actually post. They simply read the feed and scroll, which inflates claims of "active engagement."
So 22% of Americans (a 5th) is a much more believable number.
I just want to discuss stocks, news, and sports with the guys/girls. BSKY by far has the best discussions for the last year or so and its not even close.
Anyone playing the platform alive / dead game needs to find better activities.
If you personally get value from it that's the important part for sure
I have been "online" back to the old AOL / ICQ days just like you. I find myself pulling back and cutting time spent online to mostly high value priorities with some fun in between.
Either I have gotten old (early 40s) or the Internet is just not as much fun as it used to be. AI has given me a spark and some of the same feels as playing SC Brood War battlenet.
One point on the SimilarWeb data: the fact that Threads doesn't even register as a website there proves that all the traffic is from Instagram, which is a mobile-first experience. Hence, no web traffic. The other important metric is time spent. X is at a 30-minute average per session, while Threads is at a 5-minute average per session. Because no one uses Threads on purpose.
And if you don't like this data, there is plenty more.
As a marketer who looks at things dispassionately you watched a lot of this play out and were scratching your head for sure, fascinating case study in human behavior particularly in our sector
"Because no one uses Threads on purpose" is probably the truest line that has been uttered.
I must have had 500 invites to use Threads, and I held the line. Until two weeks ago.
Pluses: pictures of people's home gardens and their vegetables, which is a new interest of mine.
Minuses: everything else on that platform. I'm not kidding, it's a cesspool of all of the behaviors that I absolutely hate about every other platform. Spam. "Hi cutie" behavior from messages from Indian scammers who are masquerading as hot chicks." Not a real network at all, just a sub-thread of a sub-thread of Facebook, I guess.
Every time I have (or anyone I know has) opened the threads app its because I accidentally opened it from instagram
Another interesting newsletter, thank you. I'm not a huge social media user, but it seems like Bluesky and Threads remain a drop in the bucket compared to Twitter/X across many metrics. I knew they were well behind Twitter/X, but the extent of the latter's edge surprised me. Why haven't Bluesky and Threads been able to compete?
It's incredible to see the headlines and how people in general perceive the state of X/Twitter, and how short-sighted the declarations are.
X is what you make it and with a platform like that, generalizing everything about is as simply good or bad doesn't further a productive discussion about it whatsoever.
If your point is that Twitter would need to be turned off as a product to be dead, I'm not sure anyone ever thought that would be the case.
What is true is that the Twitter that used to exist is dead. There is still a service with many of the same features, but it's very different now. I use it very rarely as I got tired of the kind of filth that the algorithm would inject into my feed. Almost everyone I enjoyed talking to on there has left, replaced by what look like bots and sock puppet accounts.
Meanwhile, one reason activity is so high is that all of the bot protections were removed. We have no measurement of how many Twitter users are real anymore. It could be as high as 90%, no one knows.
Finally, as a business Twitter is very dead. Advertising revenue evaporated (Elon even tried suing to get them back https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05dlm0l0jgo), premium subscriptions never took off and it had to be rolled into X and then SpaceX to keep going. It's not a viable concern on it's own anymore, the question is how long they want to keep using it as a test bed for Grok, which likely depends on how long Grok continues to exist as a model (SpaceX is busy leasing out all it's compute).
Heard that it would be dead as in no longer existing many, many times. If people used more precise terms I wouldn't call them wrong, in fact I only wrote this story bc a commenter said "I heard it predicted dead so many times, you should write how it isn't." Changed, sure
So...... there are 230-235 million Americans between ages of 18-75. And I'm supposed to believe that over half of all Americans I see out in the public today are active Twitter users? Hmmmm, not buying it.
This is a common mistake when reading audience data. Monthly unique visitors ≠ daily active users. By that logic, because Google gets hundreds of millions of U.S. visitors each month, you'd have to believe every American is searching Google all day long.
The chart isn't claiming half the country uses Twitter every day. It's showing relative scale. Whether the true number is 110 million, 130 million, or 150 million, X is still an order of magnitude larger than Bluesky and dramatically larger than Threads on the metrics being measured. That's the actual takeaway.
Ok never would dispute its far larger than bluesky or threads but I already assumed that. I think the bigger point that we're discussing (or why they are releasing numbers) is about it's overall influence and importance.
Now asking everyone's favorite friend AI. Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok all gave similar responses.
Your skepticism is spot on; the claim that 130 million American adults are active on Twitter (now X) is mathematically and demographically implausible.
The Reality:
• Actual Usage: Industry analysis shows that the total user base (including inactive and automated accounts) for the United States is around \(95\) to \(108\) million accounts across all ages.
• The Adult Figure: Surveys by the Pew Research Center consistently show that only about \(21\%\) to \(22\%\) of U.S. adults use Twitter.
• The Math: Using the \(22\%\) metric, the true number of active adult users in the U.S. is approximately \(50\) to \(51\) million, which is closer to a fifth of the adult population rather than half.
Why the "130 Million" Claim Exists:
• Bot & Fake Accounts: Public platform figures frequently lump automated bots, suspended accounts, and multiple accounts (e.g., someone with both a personal and work handle) into their "total user" counts.
• Duplicate Log-ins: Third-party researchers like BankMyCell measure "active users" using logins rather than unique human individuals. If one person uses the app on their phone, desktop, and tablet, they can be counted as multiple active users in internal metrics.
• "Lurkers": According to data from the Pew Research Center, a massive chunk of this audience doesn't actually post. They simply read the feed and scroll, which inflates claims of "active engagement."
So 22% of Americans (a 5th) is a much more believable number.
Hold please.