X, or formerly known as Twitter, is where people can rapidfire their opinions and thoughts, so others can hear. This makes it one of the few places on the social media sphere where speech really matters.
As a result, this is one of the main reasons why politicians, celebrities and businesses use the platform on a daily basis to express what they want others to listen, and influence followers to do what they want them to do.
It's meant to be the townhall, where people can come together to communicate.
While X managed to squeeze itself comfortably between bigger rivals, due to how it allows people to express their thoughts and reach others in ways that rivals cannot provide, X is actually seeing a slow user growth.
Since Elon Musk took over, by acquiring it for a staggering $44 billion in mid-2022, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been actively promoting the platform, but not everything came as planned and that not all of his moves result in positive outcomes.
According to data from X reported by the Financial Times, X's daily active user growth has plummeted from roughly 30% annually just a few years ago in 2020 to less than 2% in 2024.
In the past year, X only saw 1.6% daily active user growth and has roughly 251 million daily active users, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Threads continues to see more users downloading its app.
On iOS, app downloads hover around 100,000 daily, while Threads sees around 300,000 daily downloads, according to AppFigures data. And in this 2024, Threads has seen more than double the iOS downloads of X in total, logging 51 million downloads compared to X's 20 million.
On Android, that ratio is similar, with Threads seeing 87 million Android downloads so far this 2024, while X has seen roughly half that at 45 million.
The rival from Meta is seeing an increasing number of active users, many of whom aren't users of X anymore.
But in one sector X significantly excels at, is web browser traffic.
X's website sees more than 2 billion total monthly visits, whereas Threads only sees 51.5 million monthly visits last month, SimilarWeb data shows.
This discrepancy could likely be due to Meta's mobile app-native design for Threads.
In comparison to X, Threads reported that it has 175 million monthly active users, which according to Sensor Tower is around 38 million daily users.
This is still far below X.
This suggests that Threads users aren't using it as often as other social media sites like X, which has a more established cohort of power users.
Read: Meta Introduces 'Threads': A Potential ‘Twitter Killer’ With 30 Million Users In Just Hours
X is a much more popular platform overall compared to Threads, due to the fact that it's already about two decades old.
In comparison, Threads is only one year old.
But here, Threads is growing fast, whereas X is relatively stagnant.
As Threads grows, its users are less likely to also log onto X, which could mean these two platforms don't share entirely the same audience.
Making things worse for X, reports said that a lot of big-paying advertisers have left the platform, partly due to Musk’s “free speech absolutism” philosophy and his removal of most of the site’s content moderators.
Musk admitted that his publicized opinion and interviews and his posts on X might have had a negative financial impact on the company, but this indirectly put pressure on Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X Corp..
Yaccarino, who has been hired by Musk himself, has shaken up her inner circle in the face of pressure from Musk to boost sales and cut costs.