Twitter releases ‘devastating’ stats for Elon Musk, confirming exodus of platform’s most active users

Just before it was traded to billionaire Elon Musk at a vastly overvalued price per share, Twitter publishes a survey showing a dramatic drop in interest from some of its most important users.

It’s unclear why the platform’s current owners are releasing such information just as, forced by the lawsuit he’s about to lose against Twitter shareholders, the SpaceX chief is about to give his final approval to buy the microblogging platform. What is certain is that the published analysis seems to show Twitter’s decline, with the platform losing especially the so-called “heavy tweeters”, the most active users who, despite accounting for less than 10% of all registered users, are responsible for more than 90% of the tweets distributed. These include the ‘stars’ with huge follower numbers, essential for the long-term survival of the platform.

According to the report marked “for internal use” and called “Where have the tweeters gone?”, the contribution of the platform’s most vocal tweeters has seen an “absolute decline” since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a trend that has continued to this day. According to the definition provided, heavy tweeters are those users who log on to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweet three to four times a week.

The problem is that it’s precisely this dwindling population of active users that generates about half of Twitter’s overall revenue, their departure leaving the microblogging platform in a situation not unlike Facebook, where many log in to see what’s new but almost no one posts anything interesting.

Twitter’s internal report also cites a company study that found traditionally popular topics on the platform such as news, sports, entertainment, sports and celebrities are declining among English-speaking users, Reuters reported.

On the other hand, posts about cryptocurrencies and NSFW content (nudity/pornography, scenes of violence), have become the fastest growing topics of interest over the past two years. Twitter also highlighted in its internal document that it is losing a “devastating” number of active users interested in fashion or celebrities, with these users migrating to alternative platforms such as Instagram or TikTok.