Elon Musk arrived at Twitter’s headquarters a year ago carrying a sink. “Let that sink in,” he remarked, before firing a huge number of employees.
It was the first taste of a 12-month tornado of irregular change, including the company’s renaming to X.
X has proven remarkably resilient in certain aspects. It survives in the face of old and new competitors.
But, with marketers wary and user metrics in doubt, what’s next for X?
The difficulty
Because the corporation does not share these numbers, it is difficult to properly determine how many individuals use X. However, according to various analytics organizations, X is not as widely utilized as it once was.
“Everything is down on a year-over-year basis,” said David Carr of web analytics firm SimilarWeb.
According to Ross Gerber, a Twitter investor and vocal opponent of Mr Musk’s direction, the platform is “dying.”
“There is reality and fantasy. “And the reality is that Twitter is dying and must be saved,” he continued.
What we do know is that many famous names, including Elton John and Gigi Hadid, have departed the site in recent years.
Also read: Elon Musk Uses a Crude Insult to Slam Advertisers for Pulling Back From X
Former journalist Madeleine Dunne, who now works for digital marketing firm Story Shop, said she has mostly stopped using the platform because paying for blue tick verification – a measure implemented by Mr Musk – has made it “hard to know who to trust.”
“Connecting to X is like stepping onto a sinking ship.” “The ‘For You’ page is a shambles – verified users on X Premium suffocate everyone else, so very little of the content is stuff I’m interested in,” she explained.
Advertising vs. subscriptions
The main issue for X, and Twitter before it, is figuring out how to make money. In pursuit of that goal, Mr Musk has drastically reduced expenses through layoffs, a painful process for employees.
Melissa Ingle, a moderator, stated her “stomach dropped” when her workplace logins stopped working suddenly.
“It was a very, very bad time for me,” she explained to the BBC.
Twitter has traditionally relied on advertising revenue, but Mr Musk has attempted to supplement it with a separate subscription-based business stream in which users pay for a blue tick and other perks. He recently announced the addition of two additional categories of premium subscriptions.
Those improvements, however, haven’t changed things – X is still highly reliant on ad revenue, which, worryingly for Mr Musk, is declining.
According to third-party data, monthly US ad income on the site has fallen by at least 55% year on year since Mr Musk purchased the company. Even before Mr Musk’s involvement, the company struggled to break even, turning an annual profit only twice since its inception in 2006.
He has acknowledged that it is a major issue.
“We need to get to positive cash flow before we can afford anything else,” he stated earlier this year.
Hopes for a comeback as a ‘everything app’
The selection of superwoman Linda Yaccarino as the X CEO – previously the head of advertising at NBCUniversal – was considered as a positive milestone for the company, putting distance between Mr Elon Musk and the platform.
Dr. Ben Marder, senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Edinburgh Business School, believes Ms Yaccarino was “rather strong-armed by Elon to focus on quick revenue fixes, which leaves only weapons in the arsenal that are more than likely to backfire – such as the subscription model.”
Also read: Pedro Pascal and Other Celebs Exit Twitter After Chaotic Elon Takeover
Mr. Musk encourages his employees to think big. His long-term vision for X is much broader than a social media company. He envisions X as “an everything app.”
When asked what this meant earlier this year, he told the BBC, “I guess you’ll have to stay tuned to find out.”
Ms Yaccarino provided the most explicit public description of how X would expand in July.
“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” she went on to say.
“Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine” .
Mr Elon Musk has already begun to diversify Twitter’s offerings. He streamed himself playing computer games earlier this month. He expects that X will be able to compete with apps like Twitch.
He unveiled a new audio and video conversation service without a phone number on Thursday. Several platform users received a notification when they opened the app, claiming, “Audio and video calls are here!”
Then there’s Elon Musk’s X banking aspirations.
According to the New York Times, which obtained a copy of Mr Musk’s pitch deck last year, X was intended to pull in $15 million from a payments business in 2023, which would grow to $1.3 billion by 2028.
Also read: Could X go bankrupt under Elon Musk?
Mr. Gerber stated that when he invested, he did so primarily because Elon Musk was involved.
“In a lot of ways, their pitch was like, we’re not sure what this will be.” But trust us because it’s Elon, and he’ll develop something incredible,” he remarked.
However, a year later, he is perplexed by Mr Musk’s objectives for the company. “Will he give up his absolute right to free speech in order to entice advertisers back?” “Because that’s really what it comes down to,” he continued.
Moderate migraine
Filtering out extreme stuff appears to be a continuing issue for X.
According to research conducted by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, X continues to host roughly 86% of a collection of 300 nasty posts collected a week after they were reported to moderators. The group is fighting the platform in court over its accusations.
Posts supporting antisemitism, bigotry, and white supremacy were among them.
“Musk’s 12 months at the helm of X is a perfect case study of how naive it is to expect digital platforms to self-regulate,” said Imran Ahmed, the group’s founder.
So challenges abound for X, but they don’t appear to have dampened Mr Musk’s ambition too much. His pinned post on the site he invested a lot of money on says, “X as humanity’s collective consciousness.”
