By now, you've likely heard all about the post-election exodus from Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter.
Users on X, which Musk has branded the "everything app," have been fleeing the platform. The ripple effects of the election season and Musk's support of Donald Trump have given a rise to a deluge of misinformation and toxic discourse on the platform being forced into users' feeds. As a result, X alternative Bluesky has seen a sudden surge in user signups and daily active users.
This may seem like a blip for X. It might appear like just a temporary reaction to the result of the election. However, new data points to X's woes being much bigger than a post-election backlash.
Musk's X has been steadily losing users even preceding the election. And, based on the current trajectory, millions of X users are poised to leave over the next year as well.
Since the days of being called Twitter, X has traditionally seen a significant spike in traffic and daily active users based on big current events. Elections, specifically the U.S. Presidential elections are big traffic drivers for X.
According to data from SimilarWeb, as reported by the Guardian, this was indeed the case in 2024 as well – at least, on election day and a day or two immediately following the election as well.
However, in the broader leadup to the elections, X actually continuously shed daily active users. In fact, for the entire month of October, X saw a drop in anywhere from 300,000 to 2.6 million daily active users in the U.S. each day. Since early October, daily active U.S. users have fallen from 32.3 million to 29.6 million, a drop of 8.4 percent.
Mashable previously reported on X's declining user base just one month prior to the time period covered by the latest data. In September, we published data showing that X lost nearly one-fifth of its daily active user base with a similar downward trend in the UK and EU.
However, according to analysts, it appears like X will continue its decline in 2025.
According to analysts at Emarketer, from when Musk acquired X in 2022 until 2025, they expect X to have lost 7 million monthly active users in the U.S.
The declining user base pales in comparison to the decline of X's brand and value. According to a recent report from Brand Finance, X's brand is now worth 673 million. The brand was valued at $5.7 billion before Musk's takeover in 2022. When it comes to revenue, X's revenue fell by 40 percent when compared to the prior year based on internal company data from June 2024.
