Elon Musk hails record number of X users as Mark Zuckerberg's 'Twitter killer' app Threads stumbles

It seems the tables are turning in the social media war between Elon Musk's Twitter X and Mark Zuckerberg's Threads, as the former has recorded a huge number of active users amid its overhaul.

Musk, who acquired the app formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion in October last year, is currently rebranding the site to X - his favourite letter - in his latest move to put his own unique stamp on the app.

The decision to completely rebrand everything that made people love Twitter, including the blue bird logo is on the way out as the X era begins - and it has made people very curious about what’s around the corner.

The Tesla founder’s massive overhaul comes weeks after Meta boss successfully launched Threads, which was widely seen as the app that would put the final nail in Twitter’s coffin by offering most of the same features. However, the popularity of Threads has apparently dropped off recently.

Musk naturally didn’t waste any time taking to X to boast about his achievements. The billionaire posted a graph on Friday which claimed that X had 541,562,214 monthly users in July and is showing an upward trajectory.

“Also, this is after removal of a vast number of bots,” the business magnate wrote in the same thread.

In spring last year, Twitter reported having 237.8 million daily active users and Musk estimated that as many of 20% of them were bots.

Musk’s claims arrive weeks after it was reported that Twitter’s traffic took a serious hit following the launch of Threads.

The Wall Street Journal reported that at least two third-party estimates suggested that Twitter’s traffic had fallen in tandem with the launch of Threads.

A report from data company Similarweb showed Twitter’s traffic had declined by some 11% after Meta launched Threads on July 5.

But usage of Threads has fallen by more than half, which Zuckerberg plans to address by adding more ‘retention-driving hooks’ to keep people using the app.

In an internal town hall on Thursday (27 July), of which audio was acquired by Reuters, Zuckerberg told employees: “Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” he said, adding that he considered the drop-off ‘normal’ and expected retention to grow.

UNILAD have contacted Meta for further comment.