Twitter CEO Elon Musk says user sign-ups at all-time high, touts ‘everything app’
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The planned 'Twitter 2.0 The Everything App" would have features like encrypted direct messages, long-form tweets and payments, Mr Elon Musk said.
PHOTO: AFP
BENGALURU - Twitter chief executive Elon Musk has said that new user sign-ups to the social media platform are at an “all-time high”, even as he struggles with a mass exodus of advertisers and users to other platforms over concerns about verification and hate speech.
Sign-ups were averaging over two million per day in the seven days to Nov 16, up 66 per cent compared with the same week in 2021, Mr Musk said in a tweet late on Saturday.
He also said that user active minutes were at a record high, averaging nearly eight billion active minutes per day in the seven days to Nov 15, up 30 per cent in comparison to the same week last year.
Hate speech impressions fell as at Nov 13 compared with October of last year. Reported impersonations spiked earlier in November, before and in the wake of the Twitter Blue launch, according to Mr Musk.
Mr Musk, who also runs rocket company SpaceX, automotive and clean energy firm Tesla, brain-chip start-up Neuralink and tunnelling firm The Boring Company, has said that buying Twitter would speed up his ambition to create an “everything app” called X.
His “Twitter 2.0 The Everything App” will have features like encrypted direct messages (DMs), long-form tweets and payments, according to the tweet.
In another tweet early on Sunday, Mr Musk said he sees a “path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months”.
Advertisers on Twitter, including big companies such as General Motors, Mondelez International and Volkswagen, have paused advertising on the platform, as they grapple with the new boss.
Mr Musk has said that Twitter was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” from the advertiser retreat, blaming civil rights groups pressing the platform’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation.
Activists are urging Twitter’s advertisers to issue statements about pulling their ads off the social media platform after Mr Musk lifted the ban on tweets by former US president Donald Trump.
Hundreds of Twitter employees are believed to have quit the beleaguered company, following an ultimatum by Mr Musk that company staff sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.
The firm earlier in November laid off half its workforce, with teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics being gutted, as well as some product and engineering teams.
But Twitter may be hiring again, according to slides from a company talk tweeted by Mr Musk.
The first slide had the words “We’re recruiting”, but gave no details. Mr Musk did not state when he gave the talk. REUTERS, BLOOMBERG