Apptopia, a research firm, in a new report stated that despite a drop in general usage following Elon Musk’s takeover of X formerly known as Twitter, the social media platform has maintained its grip on the microblogging market.
Apptopia, Twitter’s daily active users (DAUs) fell 16 per cent in September compared to the same month last year. Apptopia also found that the average time spent per day per user has actually been growing in the United States, and usage by Twitter’s U.S. power users remains largely unchanged.
X’s U.S. power users, or those who are in the top decile of usage in the given time period, are still heavily engaged. They accounted for 72.4 per cent of the total time spent among Twitter users in the U.S., only slightly down from 73.1 per cent in January 2022. This “stickiness” factor around Twitter usage has already caused its first casualty among would-be rivals.
A startup called Pebble (formerly T2), which tried to take on Twitter by copying Twitter features, announced this week that it would shut down, citing the competitive environment. “The durability of the network effect of Twitter is stronger than anticipated,” noted Pebble CTO Michael Greer at the time.
These findings suggest that Twitter’s grip on the microblogging market is stronger than previously assumed, even in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover and the subsequent rebranding to Twitter. While new rivals to Twitter, like Instagram Threads, are not necessarily wooing users away from one app to the other, Twitter is still able to retain some of its pull.
n addition, Twitter’s U.S. DAUs were spending, on average, 18.8 minutes per day on Twitter/X as of January 2022. When Threads launched in July, they continued to spend 19.8 minutes on Twitter. And as of September 2023, that number grew once again to 20.6 minutes.
This data suggests that Twitter is still a major player in the microblogging market, even in the face of new competition. While there have been some declines in overall usage, Twitter’s core user base remains engaged. This is likely due to Twitter’s strong brand recognition and its unique network effect.
The sources for this piece include an article in TechCrunch.