The past few days, felt akin to an unpleasant recall. Unpleasant, because of the futility and a resounding failure of the mission humanity set out to complete after Elon Musk took over Twitter (now it’s called X, keep up) a couple of years earlier. Basically, BlueSky has claimed that since the US election results were announced, millions of users have signed up for the platform. That, they first said, took that social media platform’s footprint to about 15 million users. The number, then claimed to be 20 million, a few days ago.. Cue headlines such as “users are fleeing Elon Musk’s X…” and that “X is haemorrhaging users…”. I’ve seen that before.
It didn’t dent Twitter any more than Elon Musk cared then. It wouldn’t dent X any more than Elon Musk could care now. The reality is, X is still far ahead, if you’re to look at the bigger picture beyond just the numbers. Last year, Twitter had around 250 million daily active users (DAUs), and at that point, Musk had claimed 1 billion mark was very much possible a year later. To get an official take on the numbers as they are now, is as plausible as expecting a 99 AQI day in Delhi NCR in the month of November. However, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower indicates that’s dropped to 162 million DAUs as on Election Day.
Numbers may illustrate a trend, but Musk didn’t get into President-elect Donald Trump’s circle of trust for nothing. The platform, which has long been alleged to have leaned more and more to pander to right-wing political thought (algorithmic preference, content moderation and so on) since the billionaire took over, has actually doubled down on that perception to chart its course. It hasn’t felt the need to be apologetic, even for optics. For every celebrity and advertiser that’s left Twitter and X in previous months, gone with them are followers who never really fit into Musk’s idea of a town-square anyway. His political positioning, mostly disagreeable to anyone with a smidgen of common sense and humanity, in recent months makes that clear.
X always intended for many, many users to leave, and build with ones that remained. Many seem to allege that Musk bought Twitter then, to weaponise the potent social media platform as a political tool. Likely that’s what he always wanted to do. Perhaps, he wanted to place his bets, with a longer view on a broader perspective including his businesses interests, policies shaping up and the political undertones as they evolved. Just between us, it was never a good idea to not have Tesla at an electric vehicle summit in 2021. I mean, who came up with that? Think about it. I say this as someone who doesn’t always agree with Musk’s views about many a thing (not that it matters to the billionaire).
Is it likely that the ones who wailed the most and insisted they can now instead be found on one of Twitter’s alternatives, were in a significant minority? Think about it — if they weren’t, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon and all these other names that were poised to be “the next Twitter” would have actually become “the next Twitter”. As for advertisers, Musk may not say as much, but he doesn’t care if a set of corporates don’t advertise on the platform anymore. He wouldn’t say “go f--- yourself” otherwise. Most of us took the literal meaning of that statement. The key always was, what’s between the lines.
Meta’s Threads was perhaps best placed to provide us with an X alternative. It still is, with around 175 million monthly active users and counting. But that’s really the audience, which is happier on a platform that isn’t exactly focused on news. Political opinion, particularly the polarising ones, aren’t given as much algorithmic priority on Threads. It is Meta’s conscious decision, at least for now, to keep Threads’ timeline a happier place and not exactly have news and news-based opinions flood user feeds. BlueSky and everyone else who once held aspirations of being the next Twitter, remain far behind, in terms of ease of use. That has a bearing on numbers.
One of the reasons, as I have illustrated, is the volume of opinions against X’s content trajectory doesn’t match actual users exiting. They may crib and wail, but they hang on. And that leads me to my other point, habit. It is curated, much like WhatsApp is to messaging. Many an attempt were made in recent years to find the next WhatsApp, and Signal as well as Telegram were believed to be that. They never were, and will never be. It is nigh impossible to change the habits of millions of users.
I am not saying that BlueSky, Mastodon and others don’t have a place in this world. They all do. Much like how a Realme and Nothing have a right for space in a broader ecosystem which otherwise has (arguably) much better Android smartphone choices from the likes of Vivo, OnePlus and Samsung. However, with little chance of ever sitting at the high table. The search for that Twitter alternative, was flawed from the beginning. It now, must stop.
Vishal Mathur is the technology editor for HT. Tech Tonic is a weekly column that looks at the impact of personal technology on the way we live, and vice-versa. The views expressed are personal.