It seems the tables are turning in the social media war between Elon Musk’s Twitter X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads, as the former has recorded a huge number of active users amid its overhaul.

Musk, who acquired the app formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion in October last year, is currently rebranding the site to X – his favourite letter – in his latest move to put his own unique stamp on the app.

The decision to completely rebrand everything that made people love Twitter, including the blue bird logo is on the way out as the X era begins – and it has made people very curious about what’s around the corner.

The Tesla founder’s massive overhaul comes weeks after Meta boss successfully launched Threads, which was widely seen as the app that would put the final nail in Twitter’s coffin by offering most of the same features. However, the popularity of Threads has apparently dropped off recently.

Musk naturally didn’t waste any time taking to X to boast about his achievements. The billionaire posted a graph on Friday which claimed that X had 541,562,214 monthly users in July and is showing an upward trajectory.

“Also, this is after removal of a vast number of bots,” the business magnate wrote in the same thread.

In spring last year, Twitter reported having 237.8 million daily active users and Musk estimated that as many of 20% of them were bots.

Musk’s claims arrive weeks after it was reported that Twitter’s traffic took a serious hit following the launch of Threads.

The Wall Street Journal reported that at least two third-party estimates suggested that Twitter’s traffic had fallen in tandem with the launch of Threads.

A report from data company Similarweb showed Twitter’s traffic had declined by some 11% after Meta launched Threads on July 5.

But usage of Threads has fallen by more than half, which Zuckerberg plans to address by adding more ‘retention-driving hooks’ to keep people using the app.

Meat ‘crawls off plate’

In an internal town hall on Thursday (27 July), of which audio was acquired by Reuters, Zuckerberg told employees: “Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” he said, adding that he considered the drop-off ‘normal’ and expected retention to grow.

UNILAD have contacted Meta for further comment.

Topics: Threads, Twitter, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Social Media, Technology

Twitter users are not happy at the idea of having to pay to use the platform.

Like many social media sites, Twitter/X has been free to sign up.

However, Elon Musk has recently forecasted a world where every user would have to pay a ‘small monthly fee’ to share and see posts.

Andrew Burton/Getty Images

During a roundtable talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President and co-Founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, and physicist Max Tegmark, the tech billionaire flagged the future for his platform.

“The single most important reason that we’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system is that it’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” he said (via Social Media Today).

“Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny, or a tenth of a penny, but if somebody even has to pay a few dollars or something, some minor amount, the effective cost of bots is very high, and then you also have to get a new payment method every time you have a new bot.”

Premium users have to pay $8 per month for the privilege and Musk suggested regular users would pay something smaller than that.

But, it didn’t take long for people to say they would boycott the social media site if they had to fork out their hard-earned cash.

I would not pay just to use the Twitter app. That would the last straw. What’s the best (and most ethical) alternative?

i once spent over $300 on a stupid mobile card game called guardian cross and also joined a guardian cross forum under the name waluigi to trade cards and led a secret life as a power trader with over 10k posts until the game shut down. and i would still never pay to use twitter

8:44 AM · Sep 19, 202313.0KReplyRead 32 replies

One said: “If I see a charge to open Twitter or see the TL, I’m gone. Yall can pay that man, I refuse.”

Another added: “You’ve already turned this platform into a cesspool of misogyny, racism, antisemitism & fascism. But I’ll bid adieu before I pay you a f**king cent to be here.”

A third wrote: “If Elon Musk makes it mandatory to ‘charge everyone for Twitter’ will be the death of this app. The whole reason social media is popular is because they’re free and your friends are on it. Not everyone can afford to pay.”

Musk didn’t indicate when this supposed payment would come in and whether it has been officially approve, so don’t race to log off just yet.

Removing accounts that are run by fake or spam operators has been a primary concern of Musk ever since he took over Twitter/X.

When he announced his bid to purchase the social media platform he explained it would be one of his big missions to make it a bot-free space.