In among the many numerous notes and statements that Elon Musk shared in his interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Musk additionally made some attention-grabbing remarks about X utilization, and the way it’s modified underneath his administration.

Musk has repeatedly said that X continues to succeed in all-time highs in “gadget person seconds”, a imprecise denominator which isn’t akin to different apps (as they don’t share this information), whereas Musk has additionally mentioned that X’s energetic customers are properly up on what they have been underneath Twitter, now sitting on 253 million each day actives (up from 238m in Twitter’s final efficiency report previous to the acquisition), and 540 million monthly users.

Musk reported one other enhance in X’s month-to-month utilization once more in his discussion Monday, whereas additionally highlighting an extra attention-grabbing knowledge level that’s worthy of be aware.

As per Musk:  

“There are 500 million, um, 550 million month-to-month customers, now going to perhaps 600 million month-to-month customers, and any given day there’s on the order of 100 to 200 million posts to the system.”

100 million to 200 million posts is so much, for positive, but when that’s correct, that really implies that persons are posting so much much less to X than they used on Twitter.

Again in 2013, Twitter reported that it noticed, on common, 500 million posts per day, a quantity that it’s repeatedly used as a benchmark for its efficiency. X administration even referred to that very same determine in March this 12 months, as a part of a blog post about its recommendation algorithm:

“Twitter goals to ship you one of the best of what’s taking place on this planet proper now. This requires a suggestion algorithm to distill the roughly 500 million Tweets posted each day all the way down to a handful of prime Tweets that in the end present up in your gadget’s For You timeline.” 

200 million, or 100 million posts, is so much much less X exercise, a decline of, probably, some 400%.

Musk did additionally say that he’s excluding re-posts from this determine, which might be a consider the entire calculation, whereas X has additionally, reportedly, rid the platform of a whole lot of bots, one other potential exercise hit.

But it surely does look like a giant variance.

Which, really, would possibly make some sense, if you additionally think about the broader social media utilization development away from public posting. But it surely additionally implies that X is more and more reliant on a small variety of its most energetic customers, whom it must hold posting, to be able to hold folks coming again.

Again in 2021, Pew Analysis revealed a research which confirmed that the highest 25% of energetic Twitter customers within the U.S. produce round 97% of all tweets available in the market.

Twitter had round 95 million U.S. customers, which might imply that the platform’s core energetic person cohort is just round 24 million folks within the area. So whereas Twitter could have had 238 million whole customers, solely a fraction of them have been really posting, and if these new figures that Musk’s shared are right, there might now be so much fewer folks bothering to submit in any respect.

That’s doubtless why its X Premium push has failed to realize traction, as a result of all the advantages of this system, like additional attain, recognition, even submit modifying, are for those that really submit to the app. Which is now a tiny quantity.

It additionally means that X’s “gadget person seconds” stat might be deceptive, by way of total engagement. It wouldn’t shock me in any respect if a smaller group of customers is spending much more time within the app because of the most recent modifications underneath Elon. However with far fewer posts, it appears unlikely that, total, extra persons are spending extra time on X.

The numbers might additionally level to a chance for a competitor, on condition that reaching aggressive scale is much less difficult than the top-line utilization stats could counsel.

As famous, it is also that Twitter was counting re-tweets in its numbers, and perhaps, with bot exercise factored in, 200 million posts per day is definitely extra comparable than it appears.

But it surely’s a giant variance, which is attention-grabbing to notice in broader context.