Our latest update for Q3 2023 — now renamed the “X/Twitter Migration Report” — finds that Elon Musk’s rebranding of Twitter to “X,” as well as the ongoing struggles and controversies surrounding the platform, have had negative consequences for X/Twitter, which continues to experience a steady decline in usage and advertising revenue. We also found that Threads, after its initial burst of growth and subsequent decline, has emerged as a steady competitor to the X/Twitter platform. And the trends we’ve been identifying — particularly the continued emergence of open social protocols — are ongoing.
After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in November 2022, some high-profile Twitter users — as well as many low-profile ones — publicly announced that they were leaving the platform. The exodus has ebbed and flowed due to X’s new policies, user fees, mass layoffs of Trust and Safety teams, continuing technical issues, and Musk’s own behavior.
In December 2022, we produced our first Twitter Migration report, using the data available to us to estimate the size and scope of the phenomenon of users leaving Twitter for other platforms. We’re proud to present our latest quarterly report.
As we saw in past reports there continues to be a steady decline in the number of Twitter users as more and more users “quiet quit” Twitter for other platforms. Our Q2 2023 report found three additional migration patterns: a user migration and developer migration to other platforms, and a technology migration to open protocols undergirding them.
Mastodon still sits at king, but BlueSky, another federated platform (though currently not federation enabled) is shooting up the ranks. It might overtake Mastodon by next quarter at this rate. Then Q1 2024 they're planning on opening up to federation and the floodgates will open.
