Story After X Rebrand
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, there has been lots of talk among users about leaving the platform for good. It got worse when he decided to rebrand Twitter into X.
Not only do Twitter users mourn the identity of the platform, they are also discontent with the content moderation system.
If you are an advertiser or a marketer planning on promoting on Twitter, you might want to rethink whether you want to use the platform at all. It will mostly depend on your product and your views on good versus bad publicity.
Twitter is still a pretty viable landscape for lead generation. But you should be aware of the fresh 2023 Twitter statistics before you set up camp on the platform.
Twitter Statistics Highlights 2023 -2024
Source: Meltwater
Twitter has 564.1 million users as of July 2023. This would mean 10.9% of the internet is on Twitter. If we compare it to giants like Facebook, Instagram, or even Snapchat, Twitter falls behind miserably despite being older than TikTok.
However, in terms of global popularity and recognizability, people’s minds would recall Twitter faster than Snapchat or WeChat.
Some Twitter highlights might help you understand Twitter better.
- Elon Musk is the most followed person on Twitter, with over 158 million followers.
- Twitter is the 14th most-used social media platform in the world.
- Twitter is the 7th most popular social media in the world in terms of brand recognition.
- 30% of Twitter consumers want to see their favorite brand on Twitter.
Even if Twitter is losing users at first glance, it has a strong hold over America and keeps on increasing its user base in Asian countries. This could open up a new source of revenue for marketer and advertisers.
Twitter Revenue 2023
According to Fidelity Fund- the company that lent Elon Musk $316 million to take part in the Twitter buyout- Twitter’s current market value is $15 billion. This is 33 percent less than its original value, or what Musk had to pay to buy Twitter – $44 billion.
In a more recent post on September 2023, Musk claimed Twitter’s current value is $4 billion. This would make it 90% less than the original market price.
While this number is unlikely to be true and more of an expression of anger, Twitter’s loss in revenue isn’t surprising.
Twitter’s advertising revenue has dropped by 50% since Elon Musk’s acquisition. While he is happy to blame it all on the Anti-Defamation League for the drop, the truth is, it is more his doing.
Source: Statista
From his perspective, ADL wants to ban social media accounts over small differences in perception. When in reality, they want to keep far-right, anti-semitic groups out of the platform.
Something which increased significantly after the acquisition. After all, Musk wanted the platform to be an unbiased place. But making something unbiased is often a codeword for letting violent and hateful speech run free.
877 thousand users left the platform in the first week of Musk’s acquisition, anticipating this. This led advertisers to flee the social platform as well, in fear of aligning themselves with the wrong message.
The advertisers want to run ads without worrying about how Twitter will ruin their reputation next. Especially after Twitter turned a verification badge into something anyone can achieve in exchange for $8 per month.
Things got worse when regular verified users started impersonating brands, parodying them as racists.
Considering paid verification was meant to increase Twitter’s revenue, it’s ironic it led to further loss due to the alienation of both users and advertisers.
If we look at Twitter’s profit by year, Twitter has been in the minus zone for a long time.
- Twitter’s annual net loss in 2017 was $108 million.
- 2020 was a year of loss in the form of $1.1 billion.
- Twitter had a net loss of $270 million in 2022.
Twitter has made a profit only twice since its launch in 2012, which was 1.2 billion in 2018 and 1.4 billion in 2019, respectively. For both years, the majority of the revenue came from advertising.
Considering Twitter’s valuation has drastically decreased, along with a loss in ad revenue and its long list of debts, the net income for 2023 will probably result in a loss.
Interestingly enough, Twitter’s ad revenue is also growing in areas the platform historically shunned. Ads for online gambling, fantasy sports, marijuana, or any other cannabis product have taken over the top 10 of Twitter’s advertising spots.
Yet, the country with the third highest number of Twitter users- India- is not a platform advertisers can promote cannabis products. It goes against Indian laws. While online gambling is also discouraged in the country and thus not something advertisers can market, plenty have been doing it by disguising it as a mobile game.
Twitter User Statistics 2023 – 2024
Between July 2021 to July 2023, Twitter saw the biggest growth in users from April 2023 to July 2023. It was a growth of 51.3%. A perfect recovery from when Twitter’s user base dropped by 32.9% from January to April 2023, resulting in 373 million monthly active users.
Source: Meltwater
Funnily enough, the biggest rise coincides with the release of Threads in July. It was also the month Twitter suddenly decided to drop a rate limit (limit on daily tweets and how many tweets can be read) on its users.
It’s as if trying out Threads led users to realize they prefer Twitter, even with its daily list of rebranding attempts.
Reportedly, Twitter has 564.1 million monthly users as of July 2023. Overall, that’s 7% of the total world population. Twitter also had a 16.1% increase in users from 2022. In other words, 78 million users have become active on users since then.Twitter demographics 2023
- 38.4% of Twitter users are female.
- 61.6% of Twitter users are male.
Twitter has the largest gender gap among all the social platforms. For every five males Twitter user, two are female.
However, Twitter is one of the social platforms where users tend to- or used to – feel more comfortable sharing their preferred gender identity. As a result, there is a significant percentage who might not identify as either of the genders.
When it comes to Twitter users by age, Twitter has an almost near-perfect distribution. 35 to 44 year olds are the largest Twitter demographic, accounting for 28.4% of Twitter users. This would mark Twitter as among the few platforms where Gen X makes up the majority.
The next largest user base on Twitter is older Millenials, ranging from 25 to 34 year olds and making up 26.6% of the platform. Naturally, the third highest are 18 to 24 year olds, amounting to 25.2%.
The lowest percentage of Twitter users fall in the 13 to 17 age range. While they make up 7.85 number, there is a huge possibility users younger than them are on the platform.
A survey from Edison Research in 2019 found Gen Z users are 30% more likely to join Twitter over Instagram.
In general, Twitter has always been a platform for activism for many. 26% of American Twitter users discuss political topics at least once in a month. 23% admit a good percentage of their tweets are political or about a social issue.
Source: Pew Research Center
Overall, 47% of Twitter users have posted about politics, as opposed to 40% who have posted about sports. In fact, these are pretty much the two main appeals of Twitter.
This explains why the age of Twitter users is uniform, as well as the countries which are on Twitter the most, along with those that have joined since last year.
Twitter Reach By Country 2023 -2024
Source: Statista
95.4 million Twitter users are in America, according to Statista. In comparison, 67.45 million Twitter users are from Japan, while 27.25 million users are from India.
Brazil and Indonesia have 24.3 million and 24 million Twitter users, respectively. The country with the lowest number of Twitter population is Egypt, with only 5.8 million users.
According to a Meltwater report, Twitter gained the highest number of Indian users from 2022 to 2023, getting a 76.9% year-on-year increase. Indonesia had the next largest increase in Twitter users, at 71.2%.
Even as many loyal American Twitter users leave or ignore the platform, Twitter did gain 51% more active users from 2022 to 2023. Thailand and Mexico had another promising 62.1% and 51.3% user increase from last year.
This is pretty promising for advertisers who might be contemplating leaving the platform. If your audience is any of these countries, it’s time to conduct surveys on their reasons for joining the platform and see if your product fits their demographic.
How Many Americans are on Twitter?
According to a 2022 survey by Pew Research Center, 27% of US adults are on Twitter. Of them, 14% use Twitter as a daily news source. In fact, 53% of American Twitter user get their news from Twitter monthly. To put it into perspective, out of 95.4 million US adults who are on Twitter, 13.3 million use Twitter for daily news.
Source: Twitter
This is 9% more than the percentage of American users who get their news from Facebook, which is at 44%. Even with Reddit, only 37% of Reddit users rely on the platform for news.
Twitter gets the highest engagement for news among all the other social platforms from its users, especially in America.
In another survey in Spring from Pew Research Center, 60% of yearly American Twitter users confessed to taking a break from the platform. The survey was conducted in March of 2023.
69% of US women used the platform less compared to 54% of men. Black Twitter users also were more likely not to use the platform than White users, straddling the 67% line versus 60% line, respectively.
25% of Twitter users from the same survey said they might not come back to Twitter at all. In general, the massive break users took from the platform explains why Twitter had a 51.3% increase in active users from April 2023 to July 2023.
While not all of them were US adults, the surge can be explained as old users coming back to the platform. It also stands to reason users in other countries like India and Japan who were unsatisfied with Musk’s policies, also left the platform for a short while.
According to a prediction by Insider Intelligence, Twitter is actually on the path to losing 32.7 million US users from 2022 to 2024. Overall, Twitter’s American user base is expected to drop by 5.1% in 2024.
Twitter Usage Statistics 2023 – 2024
Source: Meltwater
12% of the global population get their daily news from Twitter. Further, 15% of male and 10% of female global users think of Twitter as a reliable news source.
It’s unclear whether their definition of news means published digital articles shared on the platform or the day’s trending topic. Twitter, as a platform, was always meant to be a mix between microblogging and news publication. As a result, 25% of verified users on Twitter are journalists or media houses.
After Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, fewer than 10 out of 4,000 journalists have been deactivated. While they don’t necessarily like his ownership, Twitter has been the primary social media platform for 83% of journalists aged 18 to 29.
At least 80% of young journalists consider Twitter as an essential part of their job-sourcing and news-gathering channel. So, while they have not deactivated, they have tweeted less. They aren’t going to leave a platform where they have spent years building a following.
After all, 62% of Twitter users have found a news outlet on the platform. 50% is the amount of people who have followed a journalist on social media in 2022 as well as an account tweeting about international news. 55% specifically follow news accounts to stay updated on local news.
- 83% tweet about the latest news.
- 85% of Twitter users watch, read, or listen to the news daily.
- 94% of Twitter users have a strong interest in current events.
As such, even though 41% get their news from Facebook and 30% get their news from YouTube, Twitter gets 10.4 billion tweets about news.
In general, 18 to 24 year olds are the biggest news consumers on Twitter. The next age group is 25 to 24 year olds, who make up 16% of Twitter news. 35 to 44 year old make up 13% and 45 to 54 year old make up 11% of digital news consumers on Twitter.
The lowest group is over 55 year old at 8%. Rather than this age group having no interest in news, it is likely they prefer television or paper to get the bulk of the updates on world politics.
Twitter Marketing Statistics 2023
53% of Twitter audience is likely to give a new product a try. Twitter works similarly to Reddit, in which when a product is recommended, most people believe these are unsponsored endorsements. And so, Twitter users trust others with new product suggestions.
Also why, 40% of Twitter users have bought something after being influenced by a tweet. As a marketer, you should connect with a big Twitter account to help promote your product instead of trying advertisements straightaway.
Source: Twitter Connect Playbook
Advertisements did have a huge effect on consumer purchase decisions up until 2022.
- Brands can increase their recall rate among consumers by 70%.
- 26% more users watch ads on Twitter compared to other platforms.
- 31% of consumers consider Twitter ads more emotionally effective.
- Twitter users are 15% more likely to recommend a product to a family member or friend.
If you own a B2B business and are still not on Twitter, you have to catch up to 75% of your competitors. Overall, 67% of B2B businesses consider Twitter a key digital marketing platform. 67% is also the number of Twitter users who consider brands who are on Twitter more culturally relevant.
Additionally, 85% of small businesses on Twitter place importance on customer service.
Even the most inactive Twitter consumer contacts the brand whose product they are having an issue with on Twitter first. This is because most brands respond faster on Twitter due to the public nature and the platform’s ability to make users viral.
It helps that Twitter users often band together if they feel particularly wronged by a brand with tweets.
How many people use Twitter daily?
43.4% of internet users open their Twitter accounts daily. This leads to a total of 4 hours and 43 minutes on average spent on Twitter per month. Each Twitter session is about 2 minutes and 13 seconds.
Twitter doesn’t have the same doom-scrolling effect YouTube or TikTok has on its users. Which is a given, considering even with the introduction of short-form videos, space, and communities, people mainly tweet on the platform. How many tweets are sent out per second
According to Internet Live Stats, users would send out 500 million tweets per day in 2013. This equals 200 billion tweets per year. In other words, people used to send 350,000 tweets per minute.
And so, as of 2013, people would send out 6000 tweets per second.
But these are old numbers. Things are a bit different as of 2023, as the user base has grown significantly.
According to a tweet from Elon Musk, the World Cup resulted in 20,000 tweets per second in 2022, which was a record for the platform. If we take it as the usual number, 1.2 million Tweets occurred per minute. For that day, you can estimate about 1.7 billion tweets were sent out.
To prevent this from becoming a daily occurrence, Twitter actually has a limit of 2400 tweets for individual users per day. If a Twitter user were to exhaust this limit, they would have sent a total of 72,000 tweets per month and 8.6 million yearly.
A Twitter user also can not follow more than 400 users per day and 5000 accounts in total, although that’s not a limit most reach.
The average Twitter user has about 707 followers. If you are consistent on the platform, you can expect to grow this following. Although, 80% of Twitter accounts have less than 10 followers.
As a platform, Twitter does not exactly encourage the growth of followers for individual accounts. The makeup of the platform mostly means you run into a tweet, interact once or twice, and never see the poster again.
The algorithm has changed significantly after the X rebrand and in the past year in general. So, a poster might appear more frequently based on your likes, but it’s unlikely for a user to follow an account which doesn’t fall into the news, sports, music, or meme content category.
In fact, 83% of world leaders are on Twitter, making it the social media platform with the highest number of political public figures. This pretty much cements Twitter as a serious platform.
To grab attention on Twitter, your tweets have to be wildly funny, relevant, and current.
Final Thoughts
Despite how much the rebranding of Twitter has affected the platform, its core user base remains strong. As the worst of the rebranding has been over, many have come back to the platform as well.
Of course, if Elon Musk’s claim about charging all the users for using the platform comes true, the monthly user number would likely plummet by half or even less.
Whether that would mean you would be marketing to an extremely targeted, active Twitter audience or it would be best to leave the platform is up for debate.