Insights
Twitter is Shrinking: Web Visits Down 7.3%, App Usage Dropping
Elon Musk claims Twitter is enjoying all-time high usage. We’re not seeing it.
As part of a recent extended BBC interview, Twitter owner Elon Musk said the social media service was seeing record user engagement, and that major advertisers were returning. We’re not seeing it.
Across the web and Twitter’s mobile apps, usage is down according to Similarweb estimates. Our monthly report on traffic to the social media ad portals saw an 18.7% year-over-year drop for Twitter in March (although it’s possible the major advertisers Musk claims to be winning back placed ads through another sales channel).
From what we can see, Twitter usage by the general public, which was still rising in late 2022, has been declining since the beginning of 2023. Vox’s Shirin Ghaffary cited our data in her report, Is Twitter finally dying?
Key takeaways
- Worldwide visits to twitter.com dropped 7.3% year-over-year in March, the third straight month of declines, according to Similarweb estimates.
- Twitter’s unique visitor count on the web dropped 3.3% year-over-year in March.
- For the Twitter Android app, average daily active users were down 9.8% in March and monthly active users were down 8%, both year-over-year. Within the US, monthly active users were down 15% on iOS and 14% on Android.
- Time on site was down slightly to 10.6 minutes, from 10.7 in March 2022.
- Pages per visit were down -1.5% year-over-year (would not necessarily reflect time spent scrolling through the main feed without visiting the distinct URL for a tweet or user profile).
- Confirmed quitter account deactivations on the website, which peaked at 1.75 million around the time Musk assumed control of the company in November 2022, have subsided to 1.1 million in March – actually 11% lower than they were a year ago.
One of Musk’s specific claims – tweeted in March and repeated in the BBC interview – is that Twitter now commands more than 8 billion minutes of user time per day, which he said is a new record. We couldn’t find any evidence that Twitter’s previous management ever reported that particular metric and it’s not one we can either confirm or dispute.
Musk is also likely correcting for the presence of bots on the platform to distinguish between them and true human users. Between making his original $43 billion offer for Twitter a year ago this month and completing the transaction under threat of court order in October, he tried to back out of the deal on the grounds that the platform had fewer users than it claimed because of the presence of bots. Similarweb research found no basis for that claim, concluding that the ratio of bots to humans was about what Twitter’s former owners had reported.
Twitter traffic has been trending down since January
The chart below dramatizes the change by showing the year-over-year difference in traffic totals.
Over the past couple of years, Traffic to the website has been fluctuating from month to month, but with no consistent pattern of growth.
Apps usage has also been trending down for months
Over the same period that Twitter has been losing web traffic, app usage has also been trending down. Here is the year-over-year change in monthly active users on Android, the platform for which we have the best worldwide data.
Users aren’t necessarily quitting Twitter … just using it less
Around the time that Musk took control of Twitter, about 1.75 million users quit the platform, according to Similarweb monitoring of traffic to the desktop web confirmation page for deactivated accounts. That was a significant surge, 54.7% year-over-year, but it has since subsided. Deactivation page visits were down 11.4% year-over-year in March.
However, from everything we can see, Twitter users are paying fewer visits to twitter.com and opening Twitter mobile apps less often.
The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.
Contact: For more information, please write to press@similarweb.com.
Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager
Disclaimer: All names, brands, trademarks, and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The data, reports, and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb consist of or include estimated metrics and digital insights generated by Similarweb using its proprietary algorithms, based on information collected by Similarweb from multiple sources using its advanced data methodologies. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of such data, reports, and materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on such data, reports, and materials.
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