OPINION: X (formerly known as Twitter) has seen a steady decline in monthly users since 2022, seemingly digging its own grave with every unpopular update and tweak. Is 2025 the year we finally let X die?
According to research from Soax and Statista, X has seen a steady decline in monthly active users since peaking in 2022.
The Soax report states that the platform has lost 32.7 million – or 8.83% – of its monthly active users in the two years since Elon Musk officially acquired the app in 2022.
Why is X losing popularity?
It’s difficult to pinpoint one singular factor that might have influenced this two-year-long exodus aside from perhaps the arrival of Musk himself.
X has implemented plenty of controversial changes in recent years from inviting anyone to buy a blue tick and prioritising paying users in replies to allowing blocked users to view the profiles and posts of those who have blocked them.
All of this isn’t even to mention the wholly unnecessary ‘X’ rebrand that made coming up with a headline for this piece all the more difficult.
It’d be foolish to ignore the part that US politics has played in X’s drop in monthly active users. According to SimilarWeb, the sudden growth of competitor Bluesky can be attributed to “a rush of users either deactivating their accounts on X or committing to use it less while exploring alternatives”.
Bluesky rocketed to number one in Apple’s App Store on November 13 – a peak period for X account deactivations and the same week that Donald Trump, a candidate that Musk endorsed, won the US presidential election.
X reportedly saw more than 281,600 deactivations on the day of the election, overtaking the 200,000 users that abandoned the app the weekend Musk took ownership of X in 2022.
Who are X’s key rivals?
I don’t believe that X will be going anywhere until its users can collectively select a platform worth rallying to. For all of X’s faults, I have a soft spot for what Twitter was, the simplicity of a 280-character post, the communities I’ve joined and the people I’ve interacted with there.
Many companies and social media apps have tried to fill the hole left by pre-2022 Twitter.
Decentralised social platform Mastodon saw its user numbers spike when Musk rendered the blue verification tick (and thousands of employees) redundant in 2022. Meta also put up a valiant effort in 2023 with Instagram’s text-based sister site Threads, but even lacking a delete button didn’t help the app match X’s success.
The most recent app to gain traction has been Bluesky, which saw usage shoot up 519% in the US and 352% in the UK in the days following November’s US election compared with the first 10 months of the year.
Bluesky is perhaps the closest entry we’ve seen to an app that emulates the look and features of Twitter at its high point. Not only does Bluesky have a very similar layout, a post name that rhymes with tweet (‘skeet’) and an eerily familiar blue flying creature as its logo, but the platform was originally developed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey as a decentralised take on Twitter.
CEO Jay Graber incorporated Bluesky as an independent company in 2021, before Twitter severed all legal and financial ties with the platform in 2022 during Musk’s acquisition of the company. After beginning with an invite-only beta stage, Bluesky opened sign-ups to the public in early 2024 and has seen gradual growth with scattered surges in user registrations in the months since.
Could 2025 be Bluesky’s year?
The question is: Can Bluesky finally snatch X’s crown in 2025?
I think it may just be too early to say. Despite the rampant criticism that has hit X in recent years, the platform remains a household name and a major destination for those looking to keep up to date on trends and what’s going on in the world.
While I don’t necessarily believe that X will be usurped as the go-to microblogging platform as early as 2025, I do think that rivalling apps will continue to gain traction and my money is on Bluesky as its eventual killer.
