A new study by Pew Research on Twitter engagement before and after Elon Musk took over the platform reveals that an increased number of users are taking breaks from tweeting. It also suggests that almost a quarter of active users don’t expect to continue using the platform by this time next year.
Regarding the usage pattern surveyed by Pew, 60% of US users have stopped using the app in the past year, and many of the most popular tweeters have scaled back their in-app engagement since Musk bought the platform.
As observed in the chart below, women and Black users on the platform are the most likely to have taken a break from the app over the past 12 months.
However, it’s still early, and with a new CEO coming soon, things might drastically alter, especially if Twitter can grow as a video platform, as appears to be the plan.
The data from Pew also reveals that a very small percentage of Twitter users continue to produce the great bulk of tweets.
According to Twitter, 80% of users just view tweets in ‘read only’ mode and never tweet or interact with them in any other way. This is a major weakness in Musk’s strategy to expand Twitter Blue because the majority of the Blue incentives are connected to tweet functionality. This is one of the reasons why less than 1% of all Twitter users have adopted Blue.
It would be fascinating to watch if any changes take place once Twitter is on a good growth trajectory and is rebuilt in Musk’s preferred style or not.
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