{"id":126099,"date":"2024-11-15T10:53:08","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T03:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=126099"},"modified":"2024-11-15T10:53:08","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T03:53:08","slug":"elon-musks-x-is-hemorrhaging-users-to-threads-and-bluesky-welcome-to-the-era-of-social-media-fragmentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=126099","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk&#8217;s X is hemorrhaging users to Threads and Bluesky. Welcome to the era of social media fragmentation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>The deluge of goodbye messages from people leaving <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/twitter\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/twitter\/\" rel=\"noopener\">X<\/a> began shortly after Donald Trump\u2019s election victory last week. In explaining their decision, many in the exodus cited the same thing: The <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/10\/30\/study-shows-elon-musk-tweets-pro-trump-appear-x-users-feeds-within-2-sessions\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/10\/30\/study-shows-elon-musk-tweets-pro-trump-appear-x-users-feeds-within-2-sessions\/\" rel=\"noopener\">huge support<\/a> Elon Musk, the social media service\u2019s owner, gave the Republican candidate during the campaign and the increasing nastiness on his site.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Jody Avrigan, a podcast host and media producer with 50,000 followers on X, said on rival social media service Threads, that he was done using X, because \u201cElon Musk is a pretty destructive force in our society and politics, I want no part of him.\u201d Nicole Wallace, an anchor on MSNBC with over 1 million followers on X, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/tv\/msnbcs-nicolle-wallace-says-she-deleted-x-after-trump-win-as-an-act-of-self-preservation\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/tv\/msnbcs-nicolle-wallace-says-she-deleted-x-after-trump-win-as-an-act-of-self-preservation\/\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> on live TV that she\u2019d \u201cdeleted Twitter today as an act of self preservation.\u201d Tee Wattress said on Threads she\u2019d been on X for 15 years sharing comedic takes on pop culture and reality TV, but \u201cto see it turn into the hell scape that it is today has been devastating.\u201d Even the author and very active X user Stephen King joined Threads, telling his 7 million X followers that he was leaving the platform. \u201cTried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The large number of people swearing off X for other services may spell the end to social media as we know it. Instead of just of a tiny number of extremely popular sites for posting news, opinions, and memes, as has been the case for more than a decade, a number of new options are gaining millions of users, such Threads, owned by Facebook parent Meta, and Bluesky.<\/p>\n<p>Daily users of <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/09\/10\/inside-elon-musk-x-san-francisco-fears-of-forced-relocation-texas-hq\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/09\/10\/inside-elon-musk-x-san-francisco-fears-of-forced-relocation-texas-hq\/\" rel=\"noopener\">X<\/a>, previously known as Twitter, have declined consistently since Musk acquired it in 2022. Last year, it had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/twitter-downloads-usage-sinks-under-elon-musk-ownership-2023-9\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/twitter-downloads-usage-sinks-under-elon-musk-ownership-2023-9\" rel=\"noopener\">roughly<\/a> 250 million daily active users and Musk claimed that the total would grow to 1 billion in 2024. On election day last week, X had only 162 million daily users\u2014and even that was a yearly high, according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm that tracks the platform. A day later, that number had already dropped by 5 million, to 157 million daily users.<\/p>\n<p>Under Musk\u2019s ownership, X has lost an average of 14% of its users monthly, according to Sensor Tower. Despite the slight boost in daily users on the day of the election, an \u201celongated slide in active users\u201d has continued, Sensor Tower\u2019s research lead Seema Shah told <em>Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after taking over X, Musk made major changes to the platform to advance what he described as \u201cfree speech,\u201d whittling down the hundreds of people that once worked on content moderation for Twitter to just a handful of contract employees, reinstating openly white supremacist or otherwise vitriolic personalities, and boosting only accounts that paid to be verified, effectively gamifying the entire platform. He also tilted the algorithm to favor inflammatory posts and conservative flash points, gleefully joining the fray himself, often passing along political and racial conspiracy theories to his 200 million followers.<\/p>\n<p>Late in the recent presidential campaign, Musk overtly joined forces with Trump by campaigning for him and donating heavily to ensure a Trump victory, using X as <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/10\/30\/study-shows-elon-musk-tweets-pro-trump-appear-x-users-feeds-within-2-sessions\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/10\/30\/study-shows-elon-musk-tweets-pro-trump-appear-x-users-feeds-within-2-sessions\/\" rel=\"noopener\">a tool to that end<\/a>. He has since been by Trump\u2019s side in Florida and has been rewarded by the President-elect as the co-head of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, which shares an acronym with a cryptocurrency Musk often promotes.<\/p>\n<p>For many users, such a platform, whatever it may have once been, is no longer fun or useful. And it\u2019s set off the latest chorus of people proclaiming their exit from X\u2014for good this time, even if many have decided to keep their accounts live, but vow not to post anything more on them. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere has been a steady drift away from X for a while,\u201d Jonathan Bellack, senior director of Harvard University\u2019s Applied Social Media Lab that\u2019s part of the Berkman Klein Center, told <em>Fortune<\/em>.<strong> <\/strong>\u201cAnd yes, we\u2019re seeing more people doing it more loudly at the moment, but people have been leaving for months and months. Now, I wonder if people are choosing to leave because of their beliefs, or because the experience on the platform has gotten worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This X diaspora has coincided with the rising influence of other forms of media, like podcasts, long-form video, group chats, and comments sections on <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/youtube\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/youtube\/\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube<\/a> and Discord, for instance. It\u2019s also come amid the increasing adoption of newly-founded social media platforms. Today, many public personalities and journalists\u2014long the backbone of Twitter and X\u2014post the same thing across Threads, Bluesky, and X, hedging their bets on what may go viral where.<\/p>\n<p>For years, Twitter enjoyed near immunity from new rivals because its network effect was so strong. The more people who used it, the more useful it became and the more others therefore wanted to join. That flywheel spun for a long time, keeping social media startups and even behemoths like Meta, from even attempting to directly compete. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg quipped a decade ago that Twitter was \u201ca clown car that drove into a goldmine.\u201d When Musk started to take the wheels off of Twitter, Zuckerberg put 15 engineers to work building a veritable clone now known as Threads.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever people\u2019s reasons for leaving X, the two most likely places for people to land is either Threads or Bluesky, a startup initiated by former Twitter CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/11\/07\/block-jack-dorsey-jay-z-layoffs\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/11\/07\/block-jack-dorsey-jay-z-layoffs\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Jack Dorsey<\/a>. Both platforms debuted last year and are currently jockeying for first and second place in Apple\u2019s App store for most-downloaded free apps in the U.S. <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/author\/kali-hays\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/author\/kali-hays\/\" rel=\"noopener\">TikTok<\/a> and WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, are in the top 10 as well. Meanwhile, X is in 29th place, behind other social apps like <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/facebook\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/facebook\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a> and Instagram, both owned by Meta.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>No third party research service tracks when users delete an app from their phone. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/insights\/social-media-news\/x-traffic-peak-deactivations\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/insights\/social-media-news\/x-traffic-peak-deactivations\/\" rel=\"noopener\">SimilarWeb<\/a> found that at least 115,000 users deactivated their X accounts via the web the day after the recent election. That same day, <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/alphabet\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/alphabet\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Google<\/a> Search interest in the phrase \u201cDelete X\u201d rose 150% and has continued to grow by double digit percentage points each day since, according to Huge, a design and technology company that conducts custom research. Even news outlet The Guardian said this week it was abandoning all 80 of his official accounts, with a collective 27 million followers,  due to the increase in\u00a0\u201cdisturbing content promoted or found on the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another data point is anecdotal: Over the past week, many top X users say they\u2019ve lost significant numbers of followers, ranging from dozens to hundreds or even thousands. Brent Troderian, who has over 150,000 followers on X, said on Threads that he\u2019s lost about 1,000 followers since the election. Another well-known figure on X, Aaron Rupar, who writes a newsletter on politics and media, said he hemorrhaged 10,000 of his nearly 1 million followers last week. \u201cWhile I\u2019m not above a bad tweet or two, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s anything I posted,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Although there has been speculation online that some of these declines could be related to bots or inauthentic accounts suddenly leaving or being deleted from the platform, there is no clear evidence to support the notion.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, such follower losses coincide with growth in activity on rival platforms. New users of Threads in the last month grew 394% year over year, according to Sensor Tower. Meta said in October the service had reached 275 million monthly active users.<strong> <\/strong>Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram who also oversees Threads, said Thursday that the platform had added another 15 million users so far in November, and was \u201cgoing on three months with more than a million sign ups a day.\u201d<strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While Bluesky has far fewer users, it\u2019s been a trending topic on X and Threads over the last week as people discussed where there were heading while leaving X. Since the election, it has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2024-11-11\/threads-bluesky-see-influx-of-users-after-trump-s-election-win?srnd=undefined\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2024-11-11\/threads-bluesky-see-influx-of-users-after-trump-s-election-win?srnd=undefined\" rel=\"noopener\">added<\/a> almost 1 million new users, to a total of nearly 15 million.<\/p>\n<p>TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/snap\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/snap\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Snapchat<\/a> have all added users as well each month over the last year, from 3% to 10%, according to Sensor Tower.<\/p>\n<p>Despite all of the apparent momentum away from X, and the manipulation of its content algorithm <a href=\"https:\/\/epjdatascience.springeropen.com\/articles\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-024-00456-3\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/epjdatascience.springeropen.com\/articles\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-024-00456-3\" rel=\"noopener\">in favor of right-wing politics<\/a> and Musk himself, at least some of the people who may be leaving X are being replaced by new users. It\u2019s possible there is a sort of swap going on\u2014use among people fed up with the pro-Trump drift and Musk\u2019s omnipresence is, to some extent, being covered by people who are attracted to exactly that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough X has experienced this elongated decline in overall US active users over the past few years, it has seen a sizable uptick in new users, or those who had previously never registered a session on X,\u201d Shah of Sensor Tower told <em>Fortune<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to Sensor Tower, new mobile app users for X jumped 17% in October, among the few notable increases it\u2019s seen since Musk\u2019s takeover.<\/p>\n<p>While this isn\u2019t enough to offset X\u2019s sustained loss in users since Musk\u2019s acquisition, the overall migration among social media platforms is part and parcel to a new era of online fragmentation. This online splintering is taking with it some of the cultural and media power that had coalesced around what was Twitter, according to Bellack of Harvard, and it\u2019s likely that no one platform or type of media will take up that position ever again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwitter always had a level of influence that was disproportionate to its number of users \u2013 it had a public square feeling, yes, but there\u2019s no reason that\u2019s the only way social media can work,\u201d Bellack said. \u201cPeople leaving X, the fragmentation and people sorting themselves in other places, it\u2019s just reinforcing the notion that there will no longer be one definitive platform, and that\u2019s probably a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Are you a tech employee or someone with insight or a tip to share? Contact Kali Hays securely through\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/signal.org\/download\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/signal.org\/download\/\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Signal<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0at +1-949-280-0267 or at kali.hays@fortune.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/11\/14\/x-elon-musk-leaving-election-trump-threads-bluesky-social-media-fragmentation\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The deluge of goodbye messages from people leaving X began shortly after Donald Trump\u2019s election victory last week. In explaining their decision, many in the exodus cited the same thing: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=126099\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8629],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}