Key points:

  • Is Twitter dying? While we won’t go that far yet, Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users hooked to the platform
  • This could soon become Elon Musk’s headache as he inches closer to completing a $44 billion deal to buy the company
  • Although “heavy Tweeters” account for less than 10% of overall users, they produce 90% of all tweets and around 50% of global revenue
  • Research states that interest among Twitter’s most active English-speaking users has evolved over the past couple of years and could be a reason behind Twitter’s dwindling number of active users

Has Twitter put its golden days behind it? Is it dying? In April this year, Elon Musk tweeted “Is Twitter dying” as a joke, only to offer the social media platform five days later. While Elon Musk meant it as a joke, the reality is getting dangerously close to what he mused about. 

An internal company research report claims that Twitter’s “heavy tweeters,” who account for less than 10% of users and produce around 90% of the platform’s tweets, are leaving the platform.

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Is Twitter struggling to keep users engaged?

It appears that Twitter is struggling to keep its users engaged after experiencing a steady decline in the number of active users worldwide. This could soon become one of the biggest challenges for Elon Musk, who is on the verge of buying Twitter for $44 billion. 

As mentioned earlier, the number of “heavy Tweeters” has steadily declined since the start of the pandemic. Who is a “heavy tweeter”? A “heavy tweeter”, according to the report, refers to anyone who uses Twitter six to seven days a week and tweets at least three to four times a week.  

Evolving user interest – the reason behind declining active users?

The internal report also found that the evolving user interests since the start of the pandemic among Twitter’s most-active English speakers could be one of the key reasons behind the declining number of active users. 

The report found that interest in cryptocurrency and “not safe for work” (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography, is growing at a rapid pace among English-speaking Twitter users.

At the same time, interest in news, sports, and entertainment is fading among the same audience. Tweets about those topics are the most appealing to advertisers, leading to Twitter’s reputation as the world’s “digital town square,” as Musk jokingly described it.

 Twitter was compelled to dig into “distressing” user trends that may have been camouflaged under general growth in daily active users, according to the documents. The analysis found no concrete conclusions regarding the reasons behind the platform’s diminishing heavy users.

A Twitter spokesperson said that the company conducts consistent research on a host of trends, which are primarily shaped based on the recent events that take place in the world. 

Time will tell if Twitter’s popularity is actually going down or if this is just a small hiccup in its illustrious journey so far. 

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For the latest updates on this story, keep reading iTMunch. 

Feature Image Source: Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash