X may be struggling to retain users — and creators.
Sensor Tower data from February shows that X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app in the U.S. — down nearly 20% from last year. The platform’s U.S. user base has stagnated or declined every month since Musk began owning the app, according to Sensor Tower, with worldwide numbers showing the same patterns.
When compared to competitors like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, X faced “the most material decline in active users compared to its peers,” Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, wrote in a report per NBC News.
App download numbers are a limited metric, but they could be seen as a way to understand a company’s ability to attract new users, according to Apptopia.
Last week, X Data posted that 1.7 million people join the platform every day.
Still, data from Appfigures indicates that downloads are lagging behind new offerings on the market. On February 25, for example, Threads had more than double the downloads on iOS and Google Play when compared to X, reports TechCrunch.
Creators Aren’t Flocking to X
The platform is also struggling to attract creators, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.
Though X launched an ad-revenue-sharing program last year to attract original content from creators onto the platform, surveys and interviews conducted by the Wall Street Journal suggest that the company is behind competitors YouTube and Instagram.
X CEO Elon Musk. Photo by LEON NEAL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Some creators are wary about the state of X’s advertising business and others have experienced inconsistent payments, they told the publication.
X has “to start showing us the path to building a business on the platform,” podcaster Samir Chaudry told the WSJ.
X posted that the platform has paid out more than $45 million to over 150,000 creators in seven months and that the company pays every two weeks.
Dividing those numbers shows that the creators who got paid received an average of $300 over seven months or about $42 per month. According to ZipRecruiter, the average pay for a YouTube channel in the U.S. is about $5,726 per month.
