The return on Elon Musk’s $44 billion investment to turn the microblogging social platform Twitter (rebranded to X) into an “everything app” has been spiraling downward. The latest web traffic data from SimilarWeb shows just one example of how.
According to SimilarWeb, a traffic analytics firm, global web traffic to www.twitter.com was down 14% in September compared to the year before. The largest dip is among US-based users, accounting for a quarter of the total traffic.
There’s a silver lining here for Musk: His own X profile and posts got a massive 96% jump from last year. But that will only go so far in helping X CEO Linda Yaccarino turn the business around.
To be fair, the downward trend is not unique to X; other social networks have seen drops in traffic as well. Traffic to the top 100 social networks and communities was down 3.7% in September compared to the year before, according to SimilarWeb. A big exception, though, was short-form video platform TikTok, which got an impressive 22.8% bump in September.
X’s September 2023 web traffic, by the digits (all stats versus September 2022):
+96%: The traffic bump for Elon Musk’s profile and posts
-14%: The drop in global web traffic to twitter.com
-16.5%: The drop in global web traffic to ads.twitter.com for advertisers
-19%: The drop in US web traffic to twitter.com (the US accounts for a quarter of the site’s web traffic)
-11.6%: The drop in UK web traffic to twitter.com
-17.5%: The drop in Australian web traffic to twitter.com
-17.8%: The drop in mobile web traffic to the X app based on monthly active users for iOS and Android in the US
-14.8%: The drop in mobile web traffic to the X app based on monthly active users for iOS and Android for worldwide