One year later: Musk’s X losing users and value

A year has passed since Elon Musk assumed leadership at what is now known as “X,” formerly Twitter. With ambitious plans for a free speech platform turned super app, Musk’s tenure has been nothing short of eventful.

Since Musk’s takeover, X has faced its share of challenges. Third-party data from Apptopia suggests a significant drop in app downloads, with a nearly 30% decrease reported between July and September 2023, as detailed by Insider.

Twitter reported having 237.8 million monetizable daily active users by the end of the second quarter in 2022. Elon Musk posted in November 2022 that this figure had reached an all-time high of to 259.4 million. However, by September, X reported a lower count, with 245 million daily active users.

Twitter added 1.6M daily active users this past week, another all-time high pic.twitter.com/Si3cRYnvyD

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022

Musk bought the social network for $44 billion and later posted that the company neared bankruptcy after the purchase. By March 2023, Musk reportedly informed employees that he valued the company at just $20 billion.

Despite the fluctuations, Musk remains optimistic. In the last three months, he posted that the platform was “growing fast,” and noted that “user-seconds” had reached record numbers.

This platform hit another all-time high in user-seconds last week

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 30, 2023

Linda Yaccarino, X’s CEO, has said she anticipates that the company will turn a profit in the coming year. She noted that 90% of the top 100 advertisers from the previous year have returned, indicating continued support from key partners.

This one-year milestone came after a report from The Wall Street Journal that the banks that extended roughly $13 billion to Musk for the Twitter acquisition are now preparing to unload the debt. According to the publication’s sources, the banks expect to incur a 15% loss, equivalent to approximately $2 billion.